Cycling: Racing into the Headwind

By the time the two hosts on the Eurosport cycling channel had finished detailing Huang Chong’s personal information and past results live on air, he, the man himself, had already ridden nearly 20 kilometers with the main peloton on the roads of South Australia.

Then Huang Chong discovered that this season debut in South Australia was hot as hell.

A glance at his system’s bike computer showed the real-time temperature data: the air temperature was as high as 33°C.

However, the race had started at 11:20 in the morning.

This meant that for the 144km course, they would have to ride for at least three hours, putting the finish time well past 2:00 in the afternoon.

Given this situation, Huang Chong, who was already dying from the heat, knew without a doubt that the current temperature was nowhere near the peak. It was only the beginning.

During the height of summer, the hottest part of the day was typically between 1:00 and 3:00 PM.

’Dammit, Australia’s scheduling is brutal. They actually put the race in the hottest part of the day. Are they treating us like animals?’

Huang Chong couldn’t help but complain internally.

He followed the main peloton to the 24km mark. The first intermediate sprint point was just ahead, but the sprinters from the major teams only made a symbolic dash before completely losing interest in fighting for it.

As a result, the three-second time bonus for the first intermediate sprint point was actually taken by a climber from the UAE Team, Finn Fisher Black.

This bizarre display of deference was undoubtedly caused by the extreme heat.

No one dared to expend their energy prematurely in the high temperatures.

And it was only after the main peloton passed the first sprint point together that riders finally chose to launch a breakaway.

There were two of them in total: Louis Barre from the Arkéa Team, and Georg Zimmermann from the Intermarché-Wanty-Gobert Matériaux Team.

Meanwhile, as the race continued, Huang Chong, who didn’t need to fetch water for his teammates on the first lap, rode for an hour just coasting in the middle of the main peloton before he realized that its average cruising speed had barely surpassed 40 km/h.

At this speed, hiding in the pack, he didn’t even need to put out 250 watts of power.

Clearly, for World Tour Cyclists, this speed on a flat stage was obviously not normal.

During the Tour of Guangxi, Huang Chong had experienced the starting pace of these monsters—they would pull the average speed up to around 50 km/h right from the get-go.

Only later, when different teams took turns controlling the pace, would the average speed slowly drop to around 45 km/h.

But in the Tour of Australia, almost all the riders were getting cooked by the high temperatures from the very start, which meant the main peloton didn’t dare to push the pace too high.

At the same time, racing in the high heat also greatly increased the frequency with which the riders drank water.

Even though the race organizers allowed staff from each team to provide roadside supplies at the foot of the hill before the Fourth Category Climb, there was no way the riders could maintain 45 km/h on just that one bottle.

So, after the Fourth Category Climb on the second lap, the two breakaway riders, who had braved the terrifying heat for a tough 60km breakaway, also chose to give up and decisively returned to the main peloton.

Huang Chong, who had been lying low at the back of the main peloton, saw this and naturally knew the reason.

Those two breakaway riders were clearly unable to hold on because of the heat.

By this point in the race, the riders had only covered 81 km, but it had already taken them a full two hours.

And now, at 1:30 in the afternoon, Huang Chong glanced at his bike computer’s temperature display again. It had already reached 40°C!

Holding a cycling race in this kind of temperature was just insane!

"Huang, the climb is over. Slow down and drop back from the main peloton.

Our sprinters need to refuel on the upcoming descent.

This is where the race really starts for you. Your job is beginning now. You have to make sure our lead sprinters have enough energy to last until the end."

Huang Chong had just finished the Fourth Category climb and hadn’t even had a chance to catch his breath when the team director’s voice crackled through his earpiece.

He could, of course, understand these common instructions without Chen Junyi’s help to translate.

He had heard them countless times during winter training.

Without hesitation, he immediately slowed down, watched the main peloton gradually pull away from him, and dropped back to the team car.

Then, the team car driver handed him a musette bag full of Energy Gels, which looked a bit like a shoulder bag.

Huang Chong took the supplies, steadily controlling the bike beneath him as he kept moving forward. He then slung the musette bag diagonally across his body.

Seeing this, the team director nodded in satisfaction.

During winter training, Huang Chong’s top-tier bike handling skills had already become obvious. He gave the impression that the bicycle was an extension of his own body.

Honestly, it was extremely difficult for a rider to hone their bike handling skills to his level.

After he took the musette bag, the driver continued to pull out pre-prepared water bottles from the support vehicle, one after another.

Huang Chong took them one by one, stuffing them into the three pockets on the back of his cycling jersey: left, middle, and right.

He then continued to stuff more down the back of his jersey behind his neck, until he absolutely couldn’t fit any more. Only then did the team director in the passenger seat say to him:

"Go, Huang! Power up and chase back on. Whether the team can get a victory is up to you!"

Huang Chong was, at heart, a very clear-headed and rational person, almost completely immune to this kind of toxic motivation.

While teamwork was indeed indispensable in road cycling—for example, if teammates couldn’t get supplies for a long time, it would certainly affect their performance and could even cause them to bonk prematurely—victory was definitely not something that could be decided by a water carrier alone.