Giro: Chris Horner's brakes fail while going 50 mph downhill in the rain

SHOOT: Now this is good nail-biting journalism. Chris Horner, Armstrong's teammate describes a perilous descent in the rain on Stage 7. Armstrong - you can't help admiring him. Having broken a collar bone most people would expect him to play it safe. What does he do?

Horner: As we approached the descent the field was in full-gas mode. By now it was raining and 45 degrees. With every bit of road being used up, we were handle bar to handle bar fighting for position at 35 mph on wet, scary roads.

Astana teammate Lance Armstrong hit the front for us, stringing out the field by riding at 35 mph on the front. This helped to keep our team out of trouble and in good position at the front for the descent. On the descent we were up to 50 mph, and almost curb to curb, 10 to 12 guys across the road going all out in the rain.

Giro Stage 7: Watch the finish.

clipped from blog.oregonlive.com As we hit the tricky parts of the descent, the first hairpin started coming up quickly. I hit the brakes to set up for the corner, and NOTHING HAPPENED! Within seconds I was rubbing the rear tire of the rider directly in front of me at incredible speeds. At this point, I was really wishing that I made out my will before I left home. Time slowed down, and I knew that in the next second only two things could happen. One, I'm on the ground with something broken, or, two, the brakes would kick in and pull me back out of trouble. Luckily for me the brakes dried the rim enough that the pads could grab and start slowing me down. Now the only problem was that I still needed to survive 40 or 50 more hairpin turns in the next 30 miles before I would be safely at the finish. From this point on staying at the front and as safe as possible was the only thing on my mind.