Originally Posted by
Happy Feet
Yes, it's pretty easy to see the rider had his arms locked and could not absorb the shock of the bump. When watching, I imagine the hands would have come off the drops as well. Simply a more relaxed posture would have probably made that a non issue. Just picture how an old school rigid mountain biker holds their bars to let the bike, not the body absorb the hits.
Originally Posted by
MikeyMK
Looks to me like his hands were very important, as the seat was pushed out from under him by the rock, rendering his hands the only point of contact above the feet. Given he was palm-on-hood with nothing holding him but his thumbs, which failed him, i'd suggest riding the hoods like this proved to be completely inadequate for that terrain. I suspect he was riding light on his seat and bars, with by far the most weight on his feet, due to the rock-hard nature of a full rigid bike on rock hard tyres. So then, he could really have done with some risers, bouncy forks and balloon tyres as well. Watching that video was like watching Formula1 cars on a rally circuit.
I'm afraid that looked like the opposite of 'riding light'
For several seconds before the bump, he was coasting, one knee locked at 6 o'clock, arms straight, covering the brakes. In the context of a fast group / race pack, this usually indicates that he's "sitting up" trying not to go up in to the wheel in front of him. That's a pretty static position.
I came to road bikes after spending most of my riding 'life' on MTB's. Rigid and short-travel '90s XC bikes. Some of them were/are very agressive; 3" saddle-to-bar-drop, 140mm -5* stems, and the de rigeur 48mm tires of the day. There's a lot of practices that are fine on a road bike (on the road) that one of those XC's won't let you get away with on trail. Conversely, if you ride your road bike like one of those old racers, you can get more out of it than you would expect.
I dont' know the riding history of the crashed rider from the video, but it looked like pretty standard road bike group riding posture, and due to the pack of bikes around him, didn't see the rock before he clipped it.