Cycling: Racing into the Headwind

Australia, the land of kangaroos.

Not only is it the starting point for the annual road cycling World Tour, but the new season for professional tennis also kicks off here each year.

This is because while the Northern Hemisphere is in the depths of winter in January, it’s the opposite here—a warm and pleasant summer.

As the riders from the major World Tour teams landed one after another in southern Australia, the Australian Open, one of the four Grand Slams, was also underway in Melbourne.

Unfortunately, Huang Chong was now a World Tour Cyclist and couldn’t find the time to go to Melbourne to watch the tennis matches. Otherwise, he really would have liked to see a top-tier event like a Grand Slam.

Especially since, with his memories from a past life, he knew that in this year’s Australian Open women’s singles, a Chinese player, Zheng Qinwen, would even make it to the finals.

But back to the topic at hand. As the first race of the World Tour, the Tour of South Australia consisted of six stages.

Its course was very similar to the Tour of Guangxi, featuring numerous circuit races and no time trial (TT) stages.

Strictly speaking, the first four stages were all for the sprinters.

Aside from Stage 2, which had many short climbs and hilly terrain, the other three stages were all about the flat-ground finish line sprints.

And to ensure the climbers and GC Cyclists didn’t make the trip to Australia for nothing, the race organizers had set up two high-mountain-climb-plus-summit-finish stages in the final two days, where the general classification could be contested.

The first race day was the Tananda city circuit race.

The total distance was 144 km, requiring three laps of about 45 km each.

The stage featured two intermediate sprint points, at the 24.5 km and 73.5 km marks, respectively.

The purpose of the sprint points was mainly for the top three finishers to earn time bonuses for the general classification.

First place received a 3-second bonus, second place 2 seconds, and third place 1 second.

Additionally, at around the 31.5 km mark of each lap, at the summit of the stage’s only climb, there was a Fourth Category Climb with a total elevation gain of 490m, a length of about 1 km, and an average gradient of 5.2%.

Since this stage involved three laps, there were three Fourth Category Climbs in total.

After the climb, there was a long descent back to the Tananda District at the foot of the mountain.

The final 6 km to the finish were all flat city roads, so the day would undoubtedly end in a bunch sprint among the teams’ sprinters.

All in all, the first few stages were not at all suited for a GC Cyclist like Huang Chong.

Unless he could get into the breakaway to fight for King of the Mountains points and win the Polka Dot Jersey.

The problem was, before he left the headquarters in Germany, Aldag had already laid out the tactics for him.

The team only required him to support the other riders, not compete for results. Just finishing the race was enough.

"The start lists for this year’s Tour of South Australia are out. Take a look."

The day before the race, while Huang Chong was eating, Chen Junyi brought over a tablet displaying the start lists for all the teams and said:

"There are probably more top riders and big names here compared to the Tour of Guangxi."

"The Jieke Team, as the only Australian team, is essentially racing on home turf."

"So, apart from their core rider Ben O’Connor, they’ve brought pretty much all of their main riders."

Huang Chong took the tablet and glanced over the list of all participating teams, noticing there were 20 in total.

All 18 World Tour Teams were present.

As for the remaining two, one was a Professional Team with a wildcard entry: the Israel-Premier Tech Team.

The other was the host country’s special invitational team, the Australian National Team.

Each team sent 7 riders, except for the Australian National Team, which sent 6, for a total of 139 riders.

It was worth noting that for the 2024 season, the former Jumbo-Visma Team had changed its name to the Visma Team following the withdrawal of its sponsor, Jumbo.

After looking at the team list, Huang Chong scanned the riders from each team one by one.

Of course, he didn’t know every rider, only some of the big names.

Just as Chen Junyi had said, a quick glance revealed that there were significantly more "familiar faces" he recognized from his past life than there had been at the Tour of Guangxi.

A small number of them had also participated in last year’s Tour of Guangxi.

For example, Plapp from the Jieke Team; Viviani and Narváez from the Ineos Grenadiers Team; Onley from Team DSM; and Vader Milan from the Visma Team, whom Huang Chong had narrowly beaten in a sprint at the Nongla Mountain Peak.

In addition, based on his past life’s experience watching races, he recognized some other star riders.

For example, Simon Yates and Iván from the Jieke Team; Filippo Ganna from the Ineos Grenadiers Team; Alaphilippe from the Quick Step Team (known to Chinese fans as "the Shanghainese"); Del Toro from the UAE Team; Quinn Simmons from the Trek Team (known to Chinese fans as "Captain America"); and Gillme from the Wanty Team (Tour de France Green Jersey winner).

Although this wasn’t one of the more important races on the World Tour calendar, as long as it was a World Tour event, it clearly wouldn’t be short on star riders.

"Sigh... looking at this start list, there really are a lot of familiar faces."

"Too bad I’m just a rookie the team brought along for the experience."

"That old fox Aldag won’t even let me compete for the overall title."

"I’m afraid I’ll have to just hang back in the peloton the whole time and watch these guys I know battle it out—"

Chen Junyi could, of course, hear the heavy resentment in Huang Chong’s reply.

But that was normal.

After all, he was only 23, a true young man.