As we started the second descent, Andy Schleck yelled something at me that generally meant, “Let's not take any risks!” I was descending on the right side of the road with Levi on my left, when riders just kept squeezing by us. Half way down, after at least 20 riders had passed Levi and I, there was huge crash with riders everywhere - left side, right side, and in the middle of the road. When I hit the brakes to slow the bike down, I could hear the riders behind me starting to crash. Their bikes were sliding so fast that they were passing by me as they slid down the road. There wasn't much space left on the road with bodies and bike in all directions. The bikes that were sliding by me were now hitting the bikes and the bodies that had crashed in front of me. I squeezed through a small opening in the road, with one leg out and one leg still in the pedal. I finally came to a stop on the left side of the road, where Lance had gone down.
By the time Lance and I had gotten his bike fixed enough to ride again, we had been passed by a lot of riders. We took off in pursuit of the front group, but 200 meters later, there were another 20 riders down in the next corner. They were spread all over the road again, but this time a motorbike was down with them as well. The very next turn was more of the same, with bikes and bodies covering the road yet again. When we finally got to the bottom of the hill and away from the chaos, we were greeted with some cobblestones to remind us of how much fun we were having, just in case we had forgotten...
At that point, the radio in my ear was going crazy, as we were all trying figure out who was where and whether everyone was all right. Soon we realized that a lot of the GC favorites had crashed, but that a few had made it through and were in the front group that was now a minute and half ahead of us. Luckily we had Kloden up there for Team RadioShack. He had crashed, but had still managed to quickly chase back on to the front group.
All of the big teams were panicking, when suddenly the action stopped as fast as it had all started. Fabian Cancellara, the current leader, was in the front group and managed to talk everyone into slowing down and waiting for the riders who had gone down. Each group caught on again one by one, with the field coming together just as we hit the final climb.
