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who22
"“I saw this handlebar on eBay that was carbon fiber,” he says. “I wasn’t interested in super-light weight. I liked the bend and wanted the comfort factor of carbon.”
The $70 price tag couldn’t be beat, especially compared with $250 or more for similar bars from brands like Zipp or Enve or 3T. “They had a name brand—Hylix,” he recalls. That Avchen had never heard of it didn’t bother him. “I looked at the feedback. They had a good score.” Just weeks after receiving the handlebar, he found himself sprawled across the pavement on Santa Susana Pass. Around him, a couple of cars had stopped. “I crawled to the side of the road, then looked at the bike,” he says. A few inches out from the stem clamp, the right side of the handlebar was snapped clean off.
Avchen lost consciousness in the crash and doesn’t remember the moments before, but he has since pieced together what happened. He was descending on a straight, smooth section of road. “There’s not a scratch on the bar or levers, so I didn’t lose control and then crash,” he says. “The bar broke and caused the crash.” Based on his bike computer, Avchen estimates he was going about 30 to 35 mph. He broke his neck in two places, fractured an orbital bone and a cheekbone, suffered a concussion, and his body “was turned to hamburger.”""