Cycling: Racing into the Headwind

Chapter 136: Chapter 107: Seize the Initiative, Strike by Surprise

July 9th.

After all the teams coming to Qinghai for the competition had trained and acclimated in Doba Town for two days, the race officially kicked off in Xining City.

After signing his name on the riders’ wall, Huang Chong made his way to the starting arch, ready to set off with all the other cyclists.

His rider number for this race was 16, while Brother Xiaoma’s was 15.

As a warm-up, the first stage was a city circuit race, so the difficulty was naturally not high.

Not only was the average gradient per lap just 0.7%, but the total vertical ascent over the entire 108.8 km was only 455 meters.

Besides, during the first stage, everyone was full of energy and very excited.

Huang Chong stayed firmly in the peloton, just drafting along, not bothering to contest the two intermediate sprint points worth 5 sprint points each, nor the final stage victory.

This kind of flat stage wasn’t his specialty anyway.

No matter how much he wanted to earn UCI points, he simply couldn’t win here.

Even his teammate, Brother Xiaoma, on a stage that was his specialty, ultimately only managed 11th place against these veteran European sprinters.

Among the Chinese riders, the highest-ranked after the first stage was Jiang Zhihui, a rider from the Liaoning Team, part of Li Ning Star.

He secured fourth place in the general classification, successfully earning 5 UCI points for the country. It was a good start and a small victory.

After the race, Huang Chong patted Brother Xiaoma’s shoulder and offered a few words of smiling encouragement.

In any case, with the average finishing speed as high as 48.296 km/h, the fact that neither of them got dropped and lost time to the foreign riders meant they had accomplished their mission.

And once the Xining stage was over, they didn’t linger. They quickly boarded the National Team’s bus and transferred to Doba Town.

The next day’s race was set to start from the National High Altitude Training Base, where they were temporarily staying, and would run all the way to Guiding County Town.

Since Huang Chong had already pre-ridden this stage, he was on familiar ground when the race began the next day. For the first 20 km of flat road from Doba through Xining City to the foot of Laji Mountain, he chose to ride conservatively in the peloton, drafting to conserve energy.

Then, after the first sprint point, once the peloton reached an altitude of 2,700 meters, he executed the plan he had already formulated. He broke away from the main group and caught up to four foreign riders who had chosen to attack as they began the Laji Mountain climb.

One of the riders was Stensby Anton from the Norway Coop Repsol Team.

Another was Iderbold Bold, from the Mongolian National Team.

The other two were from the Dutch ABLOC CT Team: Sinschek Nils, the current sprint points leader, and his teammate.

When these four saw Huang Chong joining their breakaway, the three European riders were undoubtedly surprised. Only the Mongolian rider, who had competed with him at the Asian Championships, had some idea of who he was.

After all, in their experience, Chinese riders rarely took the initiative to join a breakaway.

As for the main group, which was steadily losing time to the breakaway riders up front, none of the other foreign cyclists reacted to Huang Chong’s move either.

They didn’t know the Chinese riders, nor did they feel the need to study them beforehand. Thus, they knew nothing about Huang Chong—and neither did their team coaching staff.

Only the Chinese riders from the local Intercontinental Teams immediately guessed his strategic intention when they saw Huang Chong slip into the breakaway group so early.

’That kid is obviously taking advantage of the fact that these foreign riders don’t know his strength yet. He wants to get a head start in the general classification and catch them by surprise!’

But of course, they weren’t about to run their mouths and tell these foreign riders who had come from all over the world.

After all, their core mission was identical to Huang Chong’s: to fight for UCI points for their country.

As the climb progressed, riders from Li Ning Star and the Tianyoude Team even moved to the front of the peloton, seemingly to help set the pace, but in reality, they were gradually slowing it down.