Tour de France 2013

"...One minute Froome is descending quickly but at a safe speed, next minute he learns it is not a safe speed if you are following Contador who turns out not to be as good a descender as he and Froome thought he was."

Get real... Contador is an excellent descender by anyone's standard, probably better than Froome. Contador was pushing it and so was Froome by trying to follow... Shit happens!

"I would have thought that if you crash and hamper someone else then the least you can do is your share of the chase to regain your respective positions, not freeload off someone that wouldn't even be there to freeeload off if you hadn't taken them out."

Exactly... "Would have thought" being key, as now you know better. Besides, the situation you describe isn't in fact what happened.