Cycling: Racing into the Headwind

With his team leader’s approval, Huang Chong didn’t hesitate. As soon as the race began, he followed the riders attempting a breakaway, launching repeated attacks and surges.

In the early stages of a race, the peloton always pays close attention to marking each team’s key riders.

If they spotted a general classification rival in a breakaway, they would never let them get away. Instead, they would constantly accelerate, ramping up the pace of the entire peloton to give chase.

After Huang Chong’s victory in the Queen Stage, he had clearly attracted the attention of several GC teams, such as UAE and the Quick Step Team.

At first, only five non-GC riders from the peloton had chosen to break away.

They were Stefan De Bod from the EF Education Team, Jacob Mosca from the Trek Team, Maurice Ballerstedt from the Alpecin Team, Franck Bonnamour from the AG2R Team, and Simon Geschke from the Cofidis Team.

However, after the first Category 1 climb, when the team leaders of UAE and the Quick Step Team saw that Huang Chong of the Bora Team had also joined the breakaway, they didn’t hesitate for a second, immediately getting on the radio to communicate with their riders.

Subsequently, they each sent one of their own riders, António Morgado and Gelderse Gil respectively, to join the breakaway group.

Their intention was obvious: to specifically send someone to mark Huang Chong and prevent him from overturning the general classification standings with a breakaway.

After all, both of their teams currently had a GC Cyclist in the top five of the general classification.

UAE had Del Toro, currently fourth in the general classification, only 5 seconds behind the leader, Williams.

And the Quick Step Team’s GC cyclist was Alaphilippe, sitting in fifth place overall, just 13 seconds behind Williams.

Although Huang Chong’s own GC ranking wasn’t high—only 29th—the strength he’d displayed yesterday was enough to make the coaching staff of every GC team very wary of him.

A 49-second gap certainly seemed very large on paper.

But for him, having chosen to break away today, that time gap was also very sensitive and dangerous.

If their teams didn’t send a rider to follow him, and Huang Chong truly had a monster performance in the final stage, dropped everyone, and overturned the deficit by one or two minutes to take the win...

...then they, the team leaders of these World Tour Teams, would undoubtedly become the laughingstocks of the professional cycling world. They might as well be chopped up and fed to the dogs.

Therefore, out of caution for the race and respect for Huang Chong, they didn’t hesitate to decisively nip any potential threat of him overturning the GC standings in the bud.

And so, in the final stage of the Tour of South Australia, a breakaway group of eight riders—an unusually massive contingent—was formed.

"Huang, I didn’t lie to you, did I?

I told you those GC teams would never let you get away."

After the group of eight, including Huang Chong, was let go by the peloton, the Bora Team Leader’s slightly teasing voice came over the radio:

"The strength you showed yesterday... on the surface, no one is talking about it, and it seems like none of the other riders care—

But I can guarantee you that inside every team, they’ve definitely held special meetings about you.

So, now that you have the full attention of every team, trying to catch them off guard with a breakaway again—say, to overturn the GC by a minute—is completely unrealistic.

To be honest with you, for every World Tour Team that’s aiming for the general classification, the team leader is basically as cunning as a fox.

No matter what new ideas or tactics you come up with, they’ll have already anticipated and simulated them.

That’s why the moment you broke away, they responded immediately."

Huang Chong felt his team leader was gloating a little.

It was as if he were deliberately teasing him—the country bumpkin from China’s professional league—not to try and get clever in the World Tour.

But he had no direct proof and couldn’t really say anything, so he just focused on the race and said:

"Boss, stop messing with me. Please just make sure my supplies are taken care of.

Also, remember to give me a heads-up before we reach the two intermediate sprint points.

I want to go for the time bonuses at those two sprints."

The Bora Team Leader, of course, would grant Huang Chong’s request, stating frankly:

"Don’t worry about that. This is my job. I’ll pass on any information during the stage to you immediately."

Having received an affirmative reply, Huang Chong said no more and began to focus completely, concentrating on rotating with the other seven riders in the breakaway.

In truth, for the riders in today’s breakaway, the intermediate sprint points, time bonuses, and even the mountain classification points were no longer worth fighting for.

Because the winners of both of those honorary jerseys had already been decided.

The main reasons they had broken away were to get television time for their sponsors and to see if they could make it all the way to the finish, perhaps snagging a stage win or the combativity award along the way.

They weren’t star riders, so they definitely needed enough exposure and a foundation of honors to better secure their survival on a World Tour Team.

As for Huang Chong, his desire to grab the time bonuses at the two intermediate sprints was, of course, not for the sake of an honorary jersey either.

He was purely doing it to shorten the gap between himself and the riders ahead of him in the final general classification.

In the Tour of Australia, the higher the final GC ranking, the more UCI points were awarded.

First place gets 500 points.

Descending to tenth place, the points are as follows:

400, 325, 275, 225, 175, 150, 125, 100, and 85.

As for the 500 points for the overall victory, Huang Chong glanced at the UAE Cyclist António Morgado and Quick Step Team’s Gelderse Gil beside him and didn’t dare to dream.