How I Finished The Tour de France With A Broken Shoulder | Lawson Craddock's Cabin Fever (Ep. 5)

In 2018, Austinite and professional cyclist Lawson Craddock lined up at the Tour de France, ready to take on three weeks of racing in Alps and Pyrenees. But on the race’s first day he hit a rogue water bottle and crashed, bloodying his face and breaking his scapula. Amazingly, through severe pain, he kept racing—across miles of cobblestone roads and over towering mountain peaks. 

After completing the Tour’s first week, Lawson set up a GoFundMe page and pledged to donate $200 of to the Alkek Velodrome—the Houston cycling track where he grew up—for every subsequent day of the race he completed. 

He encouraged others to match him, and they did. Local Austin businesses and corporate CEOs pitched in to the cause. By the time Lawson reached Paris he’d raised over $300,000 to help repair and refurbish the cycling track, which had been severely damaged by Hurricane Harvey. 

Lawson’s heroic ride got him airtime on NBC and other major media outlets. And when he returned home, he’d attained celebrity status in Austin—one of the few places in the U.S. you can become famous just for riding a bike.

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