Cycling: Racing into the Headwind

Upon receiving his orders, Portuguese rider António Morgado wasted no time. He got out of the saddle and began a frantic pursuit of Huang Chong.

As Morgado launched his pursuit, the UAE team director, just to be on the safe side, also notified the domestiques in the peloton, saying:

"The Bora Team’s Chinese rider accelerated on the climb ahead.

He’s trying to extend his lead.

Get to the front of the peloton, take over the pace-setting, and lead the chase for Del Toro."

But in truth, Huang Chong wasn’t even going all out on the climb.

While this acceleration was indeed intended to thin out the breakaway group, his greater goal was to whittle down the peloton behind him on the stage’s toughest 400-meter climb.

Being uniquely resistant to the heat, he was undoubtedly in the best physical condition of all the riders after so many days of racing.

Many of the other riders, however, were already utterly exhausted.

Now, forced to match his early, accelerated pace, many of the climbers were bound to be drained and lose significant time on the final climb.

As for the sprinters, they were completely dropped by Huang Chong’s intentional acceleration, falling off the back of the peloton one by one until they were out of sight.

This included his four sprint-focused teammates.

However, having already launched his attack, Huang Chong couldn’t stop now.

After cresting the Lofty Mountain climb, although he failed to shake Morgado and Gelders, he descended at the fastest speed he could manage, continuing all the way until only about 7km remained to the finish line.

From here, the rest of the way to the finish was basically all uphill.

Without hesitation, Huang Chong, now recovered from the descent, accelerated again on the climb.

Pushing his maximum lactate threshold power of 400W, he put in a hard, anaerobic effort for 5km on the gradual incline, finally dropping every other rider in the breakaway.

Then, as he entered the final 1.6km section of the Lofty Mountain climb, he got out of the saddle at the very foot of the mountain and powered toward the summit finish.

But by now, the peloton behind him knew he was going for a solo victory, and domestiques from various teams had been taking turns at the front, leading the chase.

After a relentless 28km chase, the time gap had shrunk to less than 30 seconds.

With a gap that small on a climb, the peloton could clearly see the back of the lone breakaway rider up ahead.

Huang Chong glanced back at the surging peloton and saw that it was smaller than he’d expected. He knew then that his deliberate acceleration over the last 30km had indeed dropped a huge number of riders.

This included several GC contenders, such as the AG2R Team’s leader, Peintre, and his teammate Zwiehoff.

They weren’t in the peloton, which meant they must have blown up earlier and been dropped.

Seeing this, and already nearing his limit, he made a split-second decision to avoid being swallowed by the peloton. He decisively tossed his half-full water bottle, shedding every possible gram of weight.

With only 800 meters to go, as he hit the steepest 10.6% gradient of the climb again, he launched one final, all-or-nothing, anaerobic attack.

He gritted his teeth, his heart rate pushing its 210+ bpm limit, and powered toward the summit one pedal stroke at a time.

Seeing that he could still launch a kilowatt sprint after being in the breakaway for so long, the GC group behind him, led by Stephen Williams, launched their own decisive pursuit.

And so, despite his advantage in the high temperatures, Huang Chong couldn’t just ride away from the field as he had in yesterday’s summit finish, not after a grueling 129km breakaway.

On the contrary, by the time he cleared the toughest part of the climb and hit the final 100-meter flat section to the finish line, Williams and the others were less than 10 seconds behind him.

As Huang Chong, the first to crest the climb, saw this, he felt as if his heart was about to explode in his chest.

At the same time, he could no longer think clearly.

His only instinct was to survive the final hundred meters and just get to the finish line arch, now so tantalizingly close.

90m—

70m—

50m—

30m—

10m—

To Huang Chong, this was the longest 100 meters of his life.

With about 10 meters to go, the front wheels of the trio chasing him—Williams, Narváez, and Del Toro—had already pulled up past his rear wheel.

On both sides of the finish arch, the hearts of all the fans waiting there were in their throats as they watched.

Because Huang Chong, so close to the finish, was about to be overtaken.

However, in those fleeting final 10 meters, he was completely spent. His thighs were as hard as iron, unable to manage a single additional pedal stroke. But carried by the momentum from the flat section, Huang Chong managed to cross the finish line first—ahead of the furiously chasing Williams by about half a wheel. Another five meters, and Williams would have surely overtaken him.

With his incredibly audacious attack, staying in the breakaway from the start of the stage all the way to the finish, he had won another stage of the Tour of Australia!

At the same time, his breakaway victory also earned him a 10-second time bonus.

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