Cycling: Racing into the Headwind

After smoothly grabbing the last feed bag from the side of the road, Huang Chong immediately slotted back into the lead group.

After crossing the summit, he had to ride about 6km on a flat road, followed by a 6km long descent back to Willunga Town.

Then, he would ride all the way to the 126km mark of the stage, where he would begin the final 3.4km climb.

Huang Chong glanced at the lead group around him. Only a little over forty riders remained.

It was clear that during the last climb, almost all the teams’ sprinters, and even some of the domestiques, had been completely dropped.

And among these forty-odd riders, teams like UAE, Quick Step, Visma, Jieke, and Israel-Premier Tech had clearly come prepared. They had the most riders left, with each team still having four or five men.

Meanwhile, Huang Chong’s Bora Team, as well as the other World Tour Teams, were down to just two or three riders each.

He wasn’t surprised by this development.

Teams like UAE and Visma were built around a core of Grand Tour climbing specialists.

While they did have sprinters and Classics-style riders, those were typically the team’s top stars who would never come to a fringe race like the Tour of South Australia.

The riders remaining in the current lead group were basically all star cyclists Huang Chong was very familiar with from his previous life.

For instance, there was Alaphilippe of Quick Step, Narváez of Ineos Grenadiers, Onley of Team DSM, Simon Yates of Jieke, Bart Lemmen and Vader Milan of Visma, Del Toro of UAE, and Williams of Israel-Premier Tech.

This group of riders were undoubtedly the ones who had come to this year’s Tour of South Australia aiming for the overall victory from the very beginning.

Compared to their hunger for the overall title, Huang Chong, who had been forced to fall more than a minute behind while working for his teammates, naturally had the most relaxed mindset when it came to contending for the win.

Because with the race now in its fifth stage, he was so far behind on time that a comeback was impossible.

The other riders wouldn’t consider him a competitor either.

As long as he didn’t make a solo breakaway from the main group and open up a gap of more than a minute, this bunch would pay absolutely no extra attention to his movements.

Huang Chong continued on the descent with his two teammates, sticking close to the lead group as they rode ever closer to the final climb.

Unfortunately, as this star-studded lead group entered the final ascent of Willunga Hill and the pace picked up, he noticed his teammate, Adrià, was the first to get dropped on the 8.5% gradient.

This was the true measure of his teammate’s ability.

If it were just a steady pace with the peloton like on the previous climb, he could indeed keep up.

But after more than a hundred kilometers of attritional racing, and now facing star riders from other teams who were deliberately increasing the pace on the climb, he clearly couldn’t hang on.

As a domestique, seeing this situation, Huang Chong knew he had to communicate with the coaching staff via radio, so he immediately asked the team director:

"Adrià’s been dropped, Director. Should I slow down to help him?"

Unexpectedly, the director replied without a trace of emotion, like a heartless robot:

"Forget about him. Just stay with the lead group and keep Zwiehoff with you!"

After receiving the order, Huang Chong had nothing more to say. He decisively got out of the saddle and pedaled hard to keep up with the lead group.

Soon, as the domestiques from various teams put in kamikaze-style efforts to furiously increase the pace on the climb, the group of over forty riders was once again split apart and fractured.

In an instant, its numbers were cut by about half.

By the time the riders had passed the most difficult first 1500 meters of the ascent and were about to enter the section with only two kilometers to the finish, where the gradient eased to 7.5%, Huang Chong discovered that his last remaining teammate, Zwiehoff, could no longer keep up with him either.

’Just great. As a lowly water carrier, not only did I spend the first four stages stuffing our lead sprinter, but now that I’m a domestique, I’ve gone and blown up our lead climber on an ascent—’

At that moment, the Jieke Team’s climbing domestique, Chris Harper, seeing more and more riders getting dropped behind him, seemed to get a shot of adrenaline. He once again furiously increased the pace at the front, giving no one a chance to breathe.

Seeing this, Huang Chong could only radio the coaching staff once more:

"Director, Zwiehoff is about to get dropped, too. He’s the only climbing leader we have left. What should I do?"

The team director, sitting in the support car, was actually right behind the two of them.

So he could see with his own eyes as Zwiehoff, a veteran who had served the team for many years, his face twisting into a mask of pain as he was forced to drop back.

He was no longer as calm as when Adrià had been dropped. After a long moment of silence, he asked Huang Chong in a strained voice:

"How are you feeling right now?

Do you still have enough energy to stay with the other teams’ GC leaders and ride to the finish?"

Huang Chong had just finished his last bottle on the long descent, so his energy levels were fine.

Plus, he was unfazed by the high temperatures, and after five race days with an average finishing speed of only around 40 km/h, his overall energy expenditure wasn’t that high. He replied truthfully:

"No problem, Director.

I can’t guarantee I’ll be the first to cross the finish line.

But if it’s just a matter of staying with the lead group and finishing with them with no time gap, I can definitely do that!"