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Yeah I initially tried to defend her but that was just awful bike handling
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This isn't just a single corner or a slightly twisty descent on a club run in the surrey hills though. This is relentless set of corners being done at race pace with no race radio on unfamiliar freshly tarmaced roads with very little forward line of sight.
Could easily have mistaken it for a different corner from the recce, been spat out of the previous corner onto a bad line by a poor or slippy bit of road surface or just had a momentary lapse of concentration from the mental drain of having to do all the one before it.
It's all well and good being an armchair pundit but almost all of us wouldn't get down that hill as quickly as Mara Abbot, the allegedly bad descender in the race.
It's not really awful bike handling but mildly bad handling on a section of course where the consequences of a mistake are severe at race speed.
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TheArchitect
The_Seldom_Killer
@Brun
Just seen a replay of the crash on the BBC. Clip posted above doesn't show it but her line into the corner was absolutely terrible, on completely the wrong side of the road. I know not all professional cyclists are great descenders but find I amazing that someone can get a corner that wrong, particularly cos I can't see any reason why she approached it like that.
Really good to hear she wasn't more seriously injured, it looked dreadful.