VITTEL, France — Levi Leipheimer, an American rider on the Astana team, withdrew from the Tour de France on Friday morning with a broken right wrist.
On his Twitter page, Leipheimer, who is Lance Armstrong’s teammate, wrote that he was about to have surgery, so doctors could insert a screw into the wrist to stabilize it.
“I can’t describe how disappointed I am,” he wrote on his page before Stage 13, a 124-mile, or 200-kilometer stage, that ended in the town of Colmar, not far from the Germany border. “Good luck to all my friends in the race and most of all my brothers on Team Astana.”
Leipheimer, from Santa Rosa., Calif., had been in fourth place over all, just 39 seconds back from the race leader Rinaldo Nocentini of Italy, when he crashed late in Thursday’s stage. He had had been one of Astana’s four riders in the top six over all, and had been one of the strongest riders pegged to help either Armstrong or his teammate Alberto Contador win.
In the closing moments of Stage 12, though, Leipheimer said he was surprised by a sudden turn and lost control of his bike. He ended the day with bruises on his right wrist and back and road rashes on his shoulder and back.
“I couldn’t quite save my bike from sliding out, so I slid out and hit the curb,” he said Thursday. “Surprisingly, I’m O.K. It could have been much worse.”
On Friday morning, X-rays showed that he had broken his wrist in the fall.
On his Twitter page, the team manager Johan Bruyneel called Leipheimer’s injury “not good.”