Cycling: Racing into the Headwind

This strategy wasn't unachievable. After all, many one-day races in the World Tour are either flat stages or circuit races with short, rolling hills.

Milan-San Remo is an obvious example, and races like the Bruges-De Panne Classic, the E3 Classic, the Gent-Wevelgem Classic, and Paris-Roubaix are all of a similar type.

'If I ever manage to get results in the three major Grand Tours, I could give it a shot later, just to complete my 'collection' of victories from every World Tour race.'

But for now, Huang Chong had no intention of changing his weight or riding style.

When the day of the Milan-San Remo race arrived, Huang Chong, who wasn't competing, naturally settled into the role of a fan.

This was a top-tier event, second only to the Tour de France, and the lineup was star-studded. Who would want to miss watching it live?

Most importantly, he wasn't like the local Italian fans or the fans who had traveled from all over the world to be here. They could only watch from a single spot along the route or at the finish line.

As a Bora cyclist and the winner of the last race, he was allowed to sit in the team car with the coaching staff and follow the entire race from start to finish.

This kind of treatment was, without a doubt, the VIP-of-VIPs experience.

Of course, the stage was incredibly long. For the first 250 kilometers or so, everyone was just cruising and drafting in the peloton. Following the main group in the team car for over five hours made Huang Chong's entire body ache from sitting.

Honestly, after getting used to long-distance cycling, he would much rather be out on the course himself, riding for five or six hours at a Zone 2 aerobic pace, than be stuck sitting in a car for that long.

However, when the race reached the foot of Poggio Mountain with only about 10km to go, Pogačar launched an attack. Huang Chong, who had been feeling drained from sitting, immediately perked up and shot upright in his seat.

Although he didn't yet have the strength or the opportunity to go head-to-head with the world's number one road cyclist, seeing the man's attack in person made the whole trip worthwhile.

It had to be said, Pogačar's attack lived up to his "Mars Person" reputation. An anaerobic burst on a climb was a completely different animal from a sprint on flat ground.

After all, on a flat sprint, you don't have to fight so hard against the pull of gravity.

Not only was the guy's initial burst of power immense, but the distance he could hold that anaerobic attack was just incredible.

That's why, other than van der Poel, there was simply no one else who could keep up with Pogačar on a climb.

Once the peloton started the attacks on Poggio Mountain, only Bora Team's designated leader for the race, Matteo Sobrero, was just barely able to hang on to the lead group.

To be honest, Huang Chong didn't know much about his Italian teammate.

He only knew that the man had won an individual time trial in the Giro d'Italia.

In any case, when it came to climbing ability, there was a clear gap between him and the other top-tier riders.

The final result was just as he had predicted before the race: Sobrero ultimately crossed the line in 12th place.

As for Pogačar, despite his fierce attacks all over Poggio Mountain, he just couldn't shake van der Poel. Then, on the descent, both of them were caught by Pidcock, a freak of nature whose descending skills were nothing short of prodigious.

Fortunately, Pogačar still demonstrated a powerful Sprinting Burst in the final two-hundred-meter group sprint, crossing the line in third and securing his spot on the podium.

As for first place, that went to the Alpecin Team's top sprinter: Philipsen.

Without a doubt, Philipsen's flat-road sprinting ability was truly the strongest on the World Tour.

But the only reason he won was entirely due to his teammate, van der Poel, who made a sacrificial effort on Poggio Mountain to mark Pogačar, creating the opportunity for Philipsen to contest the final sprint.

If van der Poel hadn't been there to mark him, it's safe to say Pogačar would have been without a rival in Milan-San Remo.

The reality was that, besides van der Poel, no one else in the world could have followed his attack on Poggio Mountain.

Even in the 2025 Milan-San Remo, where it looked like Filippo Ganna was glued to the two of them, the truth was that without van der Poel there, Pogačar definitely would have dropped him.

In short, on the Milan-San Remo course, Pogačar and van der Poel truly felt like fated rivals, born to challenge one another.

After the race, the Bora Team had Sobrero finishing 12th for 95 UCI points. Three other riders finished in the pack between 30th and 50th place, earning them 15 UCI points each.

But in a top-tier race where the winner earned a massive 800 points, their four riders combined had only scraped together 140 UCI points. This total was even less than what Huang Chong had earned by himself in a single Pro Level race, which undoubtedly put a grim look back on the faces of Aldag and Denke.

But they had no choice but to accept this reality.

The Bora Team simply lacked truly top-tier sprinters and classics specialists.

Although the team had riders like Welsford, Van Boppel, Meus, and Sobrero, their chances of winning a major race were practically zero.

It was only in less important races, like the overseas Tour of Australia—where other teams couldn't even be bothered to send their top sprinters—that Bora had a chance to snag a few stage wins in the sprints.