Take that, Lance Armstrong!

Sure, a lot of people look up to Lance Armstrong. We really can't argue with that, as the man fought against adversity and cancer to take home the top prize in cycling an unprecedented seven consecutive times. And, well, he did it all in France, which is no small feat for any American.

But he never continued going after losing a limb. Which means that a motorcyclicst in Japan has, um, one leg up on Armstrong. And before you ask, yes, we already feel bad about the wording of that last sentence.

Apparently, a Japanese motorcyclist, travelling in Hamamatsu, was unable to negotiate a curve, bumped into a safety barricade, felt some extreme pain, and then kept right on riding. The biggest problem? He'd left his right leg behind, and a friend was forced to retrieve it. The man didn't even notice that he'd severed his leg until he reached the next stop, over a mile down the road.

Now, we know some bikers ourselves, and we've met some people who've lost limbs during our time, but we simply cannot imagine putting the two of those concepts together into one event, and then failing to notice. Sure, this was in Japan, and that culture did spawn kamikaze pilots and ritualistic suicide for dishonor, but this goes above and beyond the call. If nothing else, we would have expected the rider to have found trouble getting leverage for later turns, or, maybe starting to feel a little faint from the loss of blood.

Of course, this is also a culture who often creates game shows wherein the more you suffer, the higher the chance you'll achieve some small prize. So it's entirely possible that the subject of our story was training for "Happy Fun Time Go Go Bike Race Super Prize Show", and figured out how to get an edge on the rest of the competition.