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I stopped trying to ride downhill as fast as possible after a few similar experiences. A few on events; one locally where the road had a huge patch of subsidence on the outside of a bend which caused a big stack, helicopter ride and stay in ICU for one guy and 3 or 4 big ones in one year at Ride London (which in fairness were probably not a mistake made by the injured riders, given the standard of some riders on RL).
The most recent was the worst. Right next to where I used to live there are three steep hills (between 12 and 23% gradient). Bloke picked 23% gradient route (in 3 years I rode down it once, it's a stupid downhill on a bike), lost control, hit parked car, flew a long way before hitting a second parked car to bring him to a halt; the police said he died on impact. Heard the crash but didn't see it.
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atz
@Greenbank
Ventoux is beyond iconic.
Cycled up it (from Malaucene) in the late 90s.
Rode past someone who had crashed and died on the road on the descent down to Bedoin.
At 60kph on the descent, and therefore in very quick succession, we passed a Gendarme's car, a bike lent up against the Armco, a body under a plastic sheet with their feet higher up the road than the head.
All of this barely processed in not much longer than it took for my tyres to go "thwitt, thwitt" through the stream of blood that ran across the road.
There wasn't much chat between me and my two brothers when we got to the bottom of that descent.
Going back and doing the Galérien (all three ascents plus the forest road) is on my list of things to do. In 2011 I had a brief chat during PBP with Paul Rozelle who did the Galérien on fixed 3 days before riding PBP. Nutter.