Cycling: Racing into the Headwind

Chapter 117: Chapter 100: A Zero-Point Competitor Single-handedly Battles Two World Tour Cyclists

The race pressed on.

After a period of high-intensity attacks and counter-attacks, riders had already begun to fall off the back.

But the members of the Kazakhstan team saw that Japan, China, Mongolia, Thailand, South Korea, Indonesia, and others still had plenty of riders right behind them. After a quick discussion, they rotated another domestique to the front to increase the pace again.

The section from the 60-kilometer mark to around the 90-kilometer mark was nothing but rolling hills—a relentless series of short, undulating climbs.

Although Kazakhstan was supremely confident in their riders’ strength, they weren’t so arrogant as to skip their homework and not recon the course beforehand.

As a result, they were also very familiar with the characteristics of today’s route.

Over the next 30 kilometers of rolling climbs, they pushed the average speed past 45 km/h. After sacrificing two of their own domestiques, a large number of riders from the other top-tier Asian nations finally began to get dropped as well.

Huang Chong glanced back, somewhat surprised to see that two riders from the Longjiang Team had been the first to fall away during those 30 kilometers of intense racing.

Now, only Brother Xiaoma and Xue Ming were left by his side, gritting their teeth and struggling to continue breaking the wind for him.

The Japanese Team still had two riders, Arashiro Yukiya and Koishi Yuma.

Meanwhile, nations and regions like South Korea, Iran, Mongolia, and Hong Kong were each down to their final rider.

Then, at around the 92-kilometer mark, a signature steep climb appeared.

The climb’s elevation gain wasn’t actually that high, only a few dozen meters, but the gradient hit around 8% and stretched for 1.5 kilometers.

During his training recon, Huang Chong had paid special attention to this climb. He knew that once they were over it, a long descent of 4-5 kilometers awaited.

After that descent, they would hit the final, most difficult combination of climbs, which began with an 11.5% gradient.

Kazakhstan currently had three riders left: the classics-style rider, Gelber; the ITT champion, Yevgeniy; and their last domestique, Demetrius.

Upon reaching the short climb, they exchanged a glance and, without hesitation, their domestique Demetrius got out of the saddle and accelerated. He unleashed an anaerobic burst of seven to eight hundred watts, launching an all-out attack on the incline.

The result was expected. Aside from the Japanese Team’s Arashiro Yukiya and Koishi Yuma, the South Korean Team’s Kim Euro, the Iran Team’s GANJKHANLOU Mohammad, the Mongolian Team’s Cham Ba Sainbayar, and Huang Chong, every other nation’s domestiques were shattered on that climb.

"I can’t hold on, champ! This is as far as I can take you! You have to keep going! You have to fight these bastards to the very end!!"

Brother Xiaoma put in one last effort out of the saddle. He kept one water bottle for himself and emptied the rest over Huang Chong’s head and back to cool him down.

Xue Ming had also given his all today, but this was as far as he could go.

For the rest of the race, he and Brother Xiaoma would have to take turns pulling and breaking the wind for each other, battling it out alongside the other domestiques who had also been dropped.

Their goal was to fight for the best possible overall ranking they could get within the second group, or even the third group if they fell back that far.

Although they already knew they couldn’t get a top-two finish in this year’s Asian Championships, they could still earn UCI points as long as they finished in the top 40 overall.

According to UCI rules, the points for the overall ranking at the Asian Championships are distributed as follows:

40th to 36th place: 1 point.

35th to 31st place: 3 points.

30th to 18th place: 5 points.

Starting from 17th place, the points begin at 10 and increase by 5 for each higher position, up to 40 points for 11th place.

For the top ten, from 10th to 6th place, the points start at 50 and increase by 10 for each higher position.

Finally, 5th to 1st place are awarded 100, 125, 150, 200, and 250 points, respectively.

Overall, the UCI points awarded for the Asian Championships weren’t particularly generous.

But for Asian countries, every single point was precious.

This was because, outside of Europe, countries on other continents could often break into the world’s top 45 with just a few hundred national points.

And the Olympic road race qualification requirement for national ranking was to finish within the world’s top 45.

Therefore, even if a rider at the Asian Championships couldn’t secure a top-two finish for a direct Olympic slot, they could still boost their nation’s points total by fighting for the highest possible finishing position.

Furthermore, points earned by riders of the same nationality were cumulative.

As long as the riders could push their country’s national points into the world’s top 45 before the Olympic qualification deadline, they would earn a spot to compete.

"Those bastards from Kazakhstan are arrogant beyond belief."

While Huang Chong pushed on alone with the other nations’ lead riders, Xue Ming, who had been dropped with Brother Ma, couldn’t help but complain between gasps for air:

"That attack was a clear move to sacrifice another one of their domestiques just to drop all of ours."

"All because there’s a super-long descent after this climb."

"They don’t want to give us any time to rest and recover."

Hearing this, Brother Ma nodded.

"Of course!"

"The real goal of that attack was to set themselves up before the hardest short, steep climb at the 100-kilometer mark. With their two remaining World Tour Cyclists working together, they’ll try to drop all the other nations’ remaining lead riders."