BRANSON’S FACEPLANT
Virgin founder/daredevil in scary bike crash
VIRGIN GROUP founder Richard Branson wants to fly to outer space.
He might want to bring his training wheels.
The business mogul took a nasty spill while riding his bike down a hill near his home in the British Virgin Islands.
He ended up with a cracked cheek, torn ligaments — and a heck of a story to brag about.
“I really thought I was going to die,” he said in a Friday post on Virgin’s website, which also showed plenty of photos of the bloody aftermath of the wreck from “a couple of nights ago.”
Branson, 66, was cycling Monday evening with two of his children, Holly and Sam, on Virgin Gorda island as they trained for the monthlong “Virgin Strive Challenge,” a charity hiking, biking and swimming challenge through Italy planned for the first week of September. Virgin Gorda is less than 4 miles from Branson’s privately-owned Necker Island.
While pedaling down a hill toward the island’s Leverick Bay, the magnate hit a speed bump — which he referred to with the British-ism “sleeping policeman”— causing him to lose control.
“The next thing I knew, I was being hurled over the handlebars and my life was literally flashing before my eyes,” he said. His mangled bicycle was flung over the side of a nearby cliff and recovered later.
Branson — whose Virgin Group is in a stiff competition with Amazon to offer the first commercial flights to space — was flown to Miami for X-rays and scans that turned up a “badly damaged” cheek, among other war wounds. He said a helmet saved his life.
Branson said that he will “hopefully” still take part in the Virgin Strive Challenge.
The more than 1,200-mile philanthropic marathon starts with a five-day hike from the base of the Matterhorn in northern Italy and includes several days of cycling down to the southern tip of Italy and a swim to Sicily through the Strait of Messina.
Money raised through the event will benefit the Big Change youth charity founded by two of Branson’s children.