Handling Hairpins

FOR MANY OF US, HAIRPIN BENDS are just about the best thing about any ride; especially when they’re twisting like a slippery serpent off the side of a jawdropping mountain pass.

Master them and push those sidewalls to their limits for ultimate skinny tyre fun—that’s what it says on the box, at least it should do. But, as ever, there is a big bad red warning notice on the flip side of any box of fun; the one that scares the life out of many, and can make even the faintest proposition of sliding the slithery snake a nightmare, especially on a wet day.

There’s a whole lot of physical, technical and mental skill bundled into carving out the perfect series of hairpin bends, yet it’s an area that few of us ever really pay attention too—which is about as mad as Swiss cheese.

Think about it: you spend all of your spare time training, losing weight and going into physical and financial oxygen debt, just to get up hills faster. But, then what—you have to get down them in one piece, and as fast as you