Chapter 236 - 152: The Unlucky Workhorses of the Third Lineup (3)
When Huang Chong saw the two team executives showering him with praise, he looked overjoyed on the surface, but deep down, he wasn’t smug, nor did he take it too seriously.
He’d watched countless road cycling races in his past life and was very familiar with the habits of Westerners.
This kind of praise was only for his performance in that single race.
As a rookie, you had to post excellent overall results in multiple consecutive races to make everyone certain you truly had top-tier talent.
Otherwise, you were still just a bottle carrier and a domestique.
The team management would show absolutely no mercy.
Anyway, in his first season, his monthly salary was only a few thousand euros. Although he received a bonus for every stage he won, the absolute most he could make in a year was 200,000 euros.
Converted to his home currency, that salary might not seem small, but among World Tour Cyclists, it was bottom-tier pay.
And salary was the best measure of a rider’s status.
Therefore, if Huang Chong wanted to become a core rider for the Bora Team and earn a lot more euros, he couldn’t let himself get a big head from these sweet-sounding but ultimately worthless compliments.
Fortunately, he had always been level-headed and knew a lot about the professional cycling industry, so he just offered a few humble words before quickly adjusting his mindset and diving back into team training.
After the Tour of Australia, the team pulled out of the Ocean Road Race, so the next World Tour event wasn’t until the UAE Tour on February 19th.
In the meantime, however, Spain and Portugal were each hosting two Pro Level races.
Spain was hosting the Valencia Grand Prix and the Almeria Classic Race.
And Portugal had the Fegla Champion Classic Race and the Volta ao Algarve.
But even though these were only Pro Level races offering 200 points for a win, a third-string rookie like Huang Chong wasn’t yet eligible to participate in these European races so close to Germany.
Aldag sent first-string riders like Vlasov, Martínez, and lead sprinter Meus to compete in these Pro races.
Their final overall rankings, however, were nothing special.
Of course, the overall winners of these four races were all big-name World Tour stars, so it was understandable that the Bora riders couldn’t compete.
The winners of the two Spanish races were top UAE Team domestique, McNulty, and Vismar’s sprinter, Kooij.
As for the two races in Portugal, they were both swept by the undisputed leader of the Quick Step Team: Evenepoel.
But none of these results had anything to do with Huang Chong, and he didn’t care.
Anyway, that old European, Aldag, always fed him a line of pleasant-sounding, respectable words, but deep down, he wouldn’t start taking him seriously just yet.
He would only send him to the mandatory races far away from Europe, the ones that were exhausting just to travel to.
Sure enough, just before the UAE Tour, when the team roster was announced, Huang Chong was on it again.
Aside from him, his six other unlucky workhorse teammates were mostly the same:
Sam Welsford
Ben Zwiehoff
Patrick Gamper
Danny van Boppel
Ryan Mullen
Emanuel Buchmann
Clearly, compared to the roster for the Tour of Australia, the only difference was that Aldag had swapped out Adrià for a local German rider: Buchmann.