Arnold Schwarzenegger recalls breaking Barbara Bush’s leg during sledding accident

Arnold Schwarzenegger once had an unfortunate run-in — quite literally — with first lady Barbara Bush.

While appearing on the Oct. 18 episode of “The Kelly Clarkson Show,” the actor said he was inadvertently responsible for injuring the first lady's leg in 1991.

Clarkson began by asking Schwarzenegger how the incident came to be. The 76-year-old explained that he would regularly visit President George H.W. Bush at Camp David when he served as chairman of the President's Council on Physical Fitness and Sports.

"He would invite me up there literally like every month. He loved hanging out with me and working out with me," he said.

One winter, Schwarzenegger was visiting when the president suggested that they head outdoors for a little adventure.

"He says, ‘I have this great sled,’ which wasn't really a sled. It was a toboggan," he said. "And so with sleds, you can steer the sled with your feet, but that one I couldn't really steer."

Schwarzenegger further set the scene as Clarkson listened intently.

"So we go down the hill in the snow. He's sitting behind me and he says, ‘You steer.’ And I did not know how to steer," he recalled. "So I mean, it's just going faster and faster, and all of a sudden we're approaching this tree. And all of a sudden Barbara comes up behind the tree, and then we just ran into her leg."

Clarkson's mouth then opened up wide in amazement.

"So poor Barbara Bush, she had to go to the hospital afterwards. She had a sprained leg and she got a cast on it and the whole thing," he said.

Luckily, Schwarzenegger said, the Bush family wasn't upset about the accident.

"I have to say that they were very gracious about it and the way they took it. And, you know, I apologized. I said, ‘I feel really bad,’" he said.

Clarkson was impressed and said, "Nobody has this story. That's incredible."

Schwarzenegger then noted that Barbara Bush was a "wonderful first lady."

The White House shared a different version of the story at the time of the accident, saying the first lady broke her left leg when she hit a tree while sledding on an icy hill, according to The New York Times.

It occurred during a sledding outing that included the president, various Bush grandchildren, Schwarzenegger and his then-wife, Maria Shriver, the New York Times reported at the time.

The New York Times reported that Barbara Bush would need to use a wheelchair for a few days, followed by crutches. The White House described the injury as a "nondisplaced fracture of the left fibula bone."

The first lady's press secretary, Anna Perez, told the New York Times that Barbara Bush was riding on a saucer-type sled when the accident occurred.

“She doesn’t know why she didn’t bail out,” Perez said then. “She just held on, and the next thing she knew, there was the tree.”

This article was originally published on TODAY.com