carbon worked for him the past couple years... at least as far as not breaking goes :)

as far as im concerned, if youre gonna beef up someones fork steerer for p-r, beef the damn thing up with a material that has a non-catastrophic failure mode! you may have heard of this material, its called STEEL :)

but swapping for some commuter-level fork to get more rake and an alloy steerer is just sloppy and cheap on treks part. give your "classics specialist" (though i still contend that someone with only a semi-classic win aint a "classics specialist" yet :) ) the right tools for the job - youre freaking TREK. make a custom carbon fork with a steel steerer, cheapskates!

the failure was in no way georges fault - it was rotten rotten luck for him, and it was a bummer - he was doing as well as ive seen him do at p-r, and to lose out because of a crap mechanical is worse on the rider than losing out because you missed the break, or didnt have the legs, or rode yourself into a ditch. at least with those you know youve got no one to really blame but yourself.

hincapies only got so many years left, and these are, by all reckoning, his best years for the classics. it sucks that this one basically went to waste for a mechanical that i see as TOTALLY preventable...