Originally Posted by
ooga-booga
four factors in no particular order...one, the top of the descent is like a ski jump run. narrow and really steep (since closed off to cyclists).
two, there is a rock wall/protruberance that juts out and forces you to veer left.
three, there was a small patch of loose gravel in the area where one would look to be shifting weight and leaning back to the right after veering left.
four, i was riding my brother-in-law's cannondale bike which was roughly 5 lbs lighter than my banger '88 cro-moly steel bianchi which i had used
previously to climb/descend the same hill. i hadn't ridden the c-dale down a hill like that before. normally, i would have to lean into my heavy beast
decently to get it to track left or right. i leaned into this lighter bike too close to the gravel patch and it sailed too far right with too aggressive
of a lean in the gravel patch area. blammo. down with minimal sliding but still down and hard. my foot went through a spoke on the back wheel and
had to bend the spoke a little to extract it from that soft, oval-shaped area comprising the ankle bone, achilles tendon and top of the heel bone on the
inside of my right foot.
Wow, that sounds painful. I bet the race commissaires would have taken you out of the race, had you been riding in a grand tour. Those Cannondales often have very steep head tube angles, which can make for some "twitchy" steering, until you get used to it. My 1988 Cannondale Crit Series has a 74.25 degree head angle. Battaglin typically uses a 75 degree head tube angle, FWIW. It's easy to laugh off a degree or two of head tube angle, but it can really affect handling pretty dramatically.
What some people call twitchy, other people call intuitive. But it does take a little extra caution at high speeds. The way i heard it explained is that the quicker steering virtually reads your mind as to where you want to go, you just look in that direction and it moves.
I was on my other Battaglin earlier this year, when I went down from a front flat tire. It also has a 75 degree head tube, which could have affected handing. I'm beginning to understand why most non-race bikes have head tubes much shallower, like in the 70-72 degree range.