Cycling: Racing into the Headwind

Chapter 104: Chapter 93: An Early Offensive, How Will You Respond?

What is the most important thing in the world?

Different people, at different stages of their lives, would probably have different answers.

Money, power, the perfect partner, the ideal career...

But for Coach Han, who had traveled a great distance south from the Capital to Mang City, Yunnan, only one thing mattered most at this moment:

To find a promising young road cyclist who was powerful and, ideally, capable of challenging international-level riders.

Among the many cyclists within the original provincial and municipal systems, he didn’t hold out much hope.

Because, as a high-ranking leader in the association, he was already well aware of which domestic cyclists were top-tier when he took the baton as head coach of the National Team.

He admitted that the competitive level of the country’s most elite group of riders was actually quite good, especially the star cyclists from teams like the Longjiang Team, Tianjin Team, Hunan Team, and Henan Team.

But in the end, there was still a gap between them and international-level riders.

Even if they competed with all their might, they could only bring back a few UCI points from major international competitions.

But as for getting on the podium and winning medals for the country, the hope was ultimately too slim.

Never mind global competitions; even in the Asia region, it was still difficult to place among the top ranks.

Recognizing reality was not pessimism.

On the contrary, as a leader of the association, he had to accept the existing gap in order to raise the entire country’s level in the sport of road cycling.

This was why the association had initiated bold and decisive reforms to the competition system starting this year.

However, when he learned during last year’s National Championships that a cyclist from the Zhejiang Team, who had never made a name for himself, had suddenly burst onto the scene and taken a double victory, a special kind of expectation had sparked within him.

This was because he was completely unfamiliar with this cyclist’s background.

After the championships, he pulled all of the rider’s records and reviewed his entire personal history from childhood onwards. He discovered that, just as he had suspected, the rider hadn’t come from a formal cycling program in his youth. Instead, he had only turned professional from the amateur scene after graduating from university.

It was also thanks to Zhang Guowei, the head of the Zhejiang Province sports bureau’s road cycling program. He had the courage and audacity to use a special recruitment slot to sign a purely amateur rider to the provincial team. After less than half a year of special training, he had fully unlocked the rider’s potential. In Coach Han’s view, this was a promising young road cyclist, an exceptionally gifted talent whose potential had been buried for over twenty years.

For a genius like this—one who could go from amateur rider to national champion in just six short months—even the well-traveled and experienced Coach Han still held out hope, anticipating that the rider truly possessed the immense potential to develop into an international-level cyclist.

And as it turned out, after watching the men’s ITT at the first stop of the league, he could already confirm that he hadn’t misjudged the man.

This cyclist, Huang Chong, was truly a gem of road cycling with an incredibly high ceiling for growth.

However, the stage race consisted of four events, and they were only halfway through. The men’s category still had two events for Huang Chong to complete, so he wasn’t in a rush to pay a visit.

Especially the road race on the final day, which was the core event of road cycling—what kind of result would Huang Chong achieve?

This was the answer Coach Han wanted to know before making direct contact.

...

At the Hengxiang Team’s quarters.

Having swept the championships in the first two events of the season’s opening race, the atmosphere during their dinner was exceptionally lively.

Coach Li himself was particularly ecstatic.

You have to understand, the pressure on him this year was immense.

For one, he had left the original state-run system to start his own team in Shanghai, becoming a self-reliant private operator. On top of that, his team’s current core lineup consisted entirely of newly signed riders.

For example, Huang Chong, Brother Xiaoma, Peng Yuantang, and the international rider Bogdanovics Maris, among others.

If they failed to produce results, the financial costs and consequences would be very high.

Fortunately, the start to the new season was perfect.

So perfect, in fact, that it had far exceeded his own expectations.

’His riders actually swept the championships for the first two individual events?’

This was practically a dream start; before the race, he truly wouldn’t have dared to imagine it.

And the biggest contributor to these two gold medals was, without a doubt, Huang Chong, who had taken the initiative to join his team.

Because he was so versatile, he was basically the ultimate template for a top GC Cyclist, a domestic Pogačar or Evenepoel, so to speak.

Of course, the competition was still ongoing, and the season had only just begun. No one could afford to relax. So after dinner, Coach Li turned serious again and continued to lay out the tactical arrangements for Huang Chong and the others for the next two race days:

"Tomorrow is the third race day. We’ll have the men’s and women’s TTT, and the route will also start from Yunmen Village.

"Compared to the turnaround point in the ITT, the TTT course is longer. The turnaround is set at the 25-kilometer mark.

"So, for the same route, you’ll need to do two laps.

"For this event, even though the ITT champion is on our team, it’s not our strongest event in terms of overall team strength. So just do your best. Don’t worry too much about the result.

"However, for the road race on the final day, our team’s Huang Chong has a great chance to contend for the championship.

"So, everyone must treat him as the Core Commander.

"You’re all familiar with the road race route. It starts from Mang City Square, goes through Mang City Avenue, Golden Peacock Avenue, and Airport Avenue, passes the Yunmen Village Intersection, and turns around at the intersection of the G320 and Mangrui Avenue."