Originally Posted by DannoXYZ

I was in that race. The problem wasn't the corners, which were pretty simple. The main problem was that the course-layout on the main straight down Shoreline. At the time it was a 3-lane road with one lane going uphill that merged into one near the top (driving like a car). The downhill had one lane at the top that split into two lanes going down. There was an island in between with concrete planter boxes.

For the day of that race, the organizers had the entire road closed. They chose to run the course in the opposite direction you drive. This means that the uphill on Shoreline went from one lane into two and the downhill went from two lanes into one. The finish line was at the bottom of the hill before hitting Loma Alta. Now think about this... finishing sprints in 1/2/pro races are 42-46mph on the flats. Imagine this race going DOWNHILL, which adds 5-8mph easily. AND imagine two lanes of monster sprinters elbow-to-elbow flying down a two-lane hill. Then IMAGINE this two lane road squeezing down into a 1-lane cattle shute as they're going 50mph+ towards the finish.

Yeah, "lost control" is a nice spin on what happened. Barrett tangled bars/elbows with someone in the final sprint fighting for the win. There was no room when the road went down to one lane and ended up hitting a concrete planter box. Ripped his aorta and died on the way to hospital. Or course, the organizers hat put hay-bales in front of the concrete planter boxes, but they were facing the uphill direction of travel.