Beloki losing rear tire... Tubular problem?

"Lindsay Rowlands" wrote:

: It seems from many of the contributions to this thread
: that a lot of people would be happy if they could prove
: categorically that Beloki crashed because he used tubulars.
: It's as if psyches would be eased if the crash could be
: blamed on the equipment.

That's certainly not my intention. I still have one set of tubs, though I
don't race on them.

What's to understand? At 100kph in on a twisty mountain
road, losing traction for whatever reason narrows down the
possibilities of keeping the bike/rider system in some kind
of stasis. Just as it was very arsey that LA survived the
cyclocross event, Beloki would have needed a generous
amount of luck to have saved his slide, correction and
counterslide, regardless of the road repair. If my memory
serves me, he was heading for the outside of the corner
in a state of control loss anyway.

I doubt he was doing anything like 100kph at the moment of the slide, but I
agree that having begun to slide, he would probably have crashed no matter
what the road surface or type of tyre. But he would probably have crashed
differently.

While it may an engaging opportunity for speculation, the
dynamics of the crash can never be understood in a complete
way. I just wonder what the point is.

The point? Speaking for myself, I've got a work deadline approaching, and
this is easy procrastination.

It would be much more heartening - restore faith in humanity
- if we could have a discussion about what a **** of thing it
was to have happen to an elite sportsperson, the implications
for their future and what can we as the public do as support
for them.

This is rec.bicycles.tech. If I were interested in that touchy-feely
empathetic ****, I'd probably go post on uk.rec.cycling ...

James Thomson