Graeme Fife writes in his book on the tour de France 

"After a visit to the market -town of St Girons browsing round secondhand bookshops and antiquated back -streets, Jan suggested a trip to see the Memorial  to Fabio Casartelli, the young Italian  rider killed in 1995 .It was a sombre ride in the car up through the village of Portet d’Aspet , onto the col and down through the trees .I’d seen the accident -moment s 
after it happened — on French television: Casartelli lying inert in a pool of blood, no indication whether he was still alive .Virenque wasn’t told what had happened until he was sitting  in the  caravan waiting  to mount the podium. As we drove down, I was riding the descent in my mind marking the way the camber seems to tip out towards the verge, sometimes , to make the sinuous ledge you’re riding on slope away from the mount ain wall, so that the already sharp right -hander has an extra danger built in .And the long open serpentine twists of the road occassionally tighten to make rounding the bend an abrupt lesson in balance, nerve, judicious braking . 
Suddenly we saw the memorial ahead it stands a hundred metres or so uphill from where he skidded 
Is it just imagination that makes that sharp curve, like a kink in wire, 1look so dramatically  steeper, more frightening than, than the others? The stone that killed him is gone, a low wall fringes the verge, and at the spot a makeshift shrine — plaque, flowers, ribbons Till recently, there had been the same wrack of old tubs that I saw on Ventoux for Simpson, for ages a Motorola cap signed by every member of the team -a valuable collectable for anyone meretricious enough to purloin it . 
No one did ."