According to the latest Twitter post from @lancearmstrong, seven-time Tour de France champion, Lance Armstrong, had successful surgery to repair a broken clavicle.
Everything is all tied together for Lance... with a titanium plate and 12 screws, of course. Nevertheless, Armstrong is still looking at a return in time for Tour of Italy in early May, as well as the Tour de France, which starts July 4 in Monaco.
About that initial 4-to-6 week recovery diagnosis, well, Lance told Bonnie Ford it might be a little too long.
"We'll know more in the next week," he said. "The sooner I can get on the bike, the quicker we'll know. ... Even if I went into the Giro underprepared and was riding it as preparation for other events, I'd still do it. I'd still be excited to go and do that."
In his first few months back in the saddle after a three-year retirement, Armstrong is catching up for lost time as far as injuries go. Through the first part of his career, Armstrong avoided major injuries, excluding, of course, cancer.
But Armstrong took a spill in the Tour of California last month and battled some pretty rough conditions in the early stages of that race. Then during Monday's opening stage of the five-stage Vuelta a Castilla y Leon in Northern Spain, he busted up his clavicle so that the bone was displaced and splintered.
"Lying in the ditch in that situation [Monday] ... You sort of ask yourself, 'What the hell am I doing here?'" he told Ford. "I don't feel that way today, necessarily, although I'm still in a lot of pain and ready to get this behind me. It was a shock.
"To go as long as I have without having anything like this happen is basically a miracle. ... It was bound to happen. It's not good timing, but it certainly could be worse. And I look at it from a different perspective, too, just from the curveballs my health has thrown me in the past. Laying in that ditch with a shattered collarbone is a lot better than other health scares I've had."
Putting it that way, a displaced and splintered collarbone really isn't much an injury at all.