Cycling: Racing into the Headwind

Chapter 168: Chapter 122: After a High-Intensity Struggle, Showdown at Zitong Ridge

Kazakhstan’s strategy was indeed just as Coach Han had predicted.

Or rather, their national team’s strategy had always been transparent to the outside world.

Since they possessed the best talent in all of Asia, with their National Team members competing on the World Tour year-round, wasn’t participating in an Asian race just a complete curb-stomp?

It was a well-known fact that the number of cyclists from the rest of Asia combined who could make it onto a World Tour Team was likely fewer than from Kazakhstan alone—a pitifully small number.

This was enough to illustrate the real gap between the various Asian nations and Europe in the sport of road cycling.

And their country was the only one whose road cycling level could go head-to-head with the European powerhouses.

That was why their strategy could be so simple and direct: use the raw strength of their own cyclists to wear down all their Asian rivals with World Tour-level speeds during the first half of the race.

Then, when the most difficult climbs arrived, they would launch a sudden attack. No opponent would be able to keep up, allowing them to successfully break away.

This was how they had won the last two Asian Games, developing a mindset born of routine victory.

The one thing that none of the participants from Kazakhstan had expected was that China had suddenly produced a new cyclist this year—one who had put immense pressure on them from the moment he appeared.

Not only had he snatched away one of the two Olympic spots they thought they could easily sweep at the Asian Championships, but he had also defeated their strongest cyclist in the ITT event at the Asian Games held at the end of the year—

You have to understand, in the road cycling events at the Asian Games, there were only two gold medals in total for the men’s category.

They had sent Lutsenko to compete with the full intention of securing both gold medals.

But unexpectedly, they had crashed and burned in the very first event.

And now, just four months later, this guy named Huang Chong’s strength had skyrocketed to a terrifying new level!

If they gave him any more time to develop, would they have to just hand over the titles of both Asian King of Cycling and Asia’s number one road cycling nation?

But even knowing how strong Huang Chong had become, the head coach of Kazakhstan had no better strategy up his sleeve.

The only solution was to imitate their strategy from the Asian Championships: have their four cyclists cooperate and see if they could ride together until the end.

Even if they couldn’t shake Huang Chong, as long as they could drop the cyclists from the other Asian nations and isolate him in a many-against-one scenario, their probability of winning the gold medal would still be over ninety percent.

Because no one could withstand the repeated attacks and attrition from World Tour Cyclists, responding to every anaerobic assault without cracking.

Alas, road cycling races are always full of uncertainty.

After the race began, although Lutsenko and Yevgeniy were still as dominant as ever, breaking away from the main peloton immediately, the head coach discovered as the kilometers ticked by that their other two cyclists, Gelber and Demetrius, couldn’t keep up with the pace today at all.

Not only were the two of them stuck drafting in the peloton from the very beginning, but the gap between them and their teammates was also growing wider and wider.

What was worse, there wasn’t a single Chinese cyclist in the peloton with them.

All four cyclists from the China Team had somehow charged into the breakaway group with Lutsenko and Yevgeniy, leaving the Kazakhstan head coach completely dumbfounded.

He especially noticed Niu Yikui, the domestique responsible for delivering water and supplies, riding as if his life depended on it for almost the entire race, making trip after trip at an anaerobic power output to frantically supply his teammates—

It was as if the China Team had decided before the race that every single one of them would have to go all out for this event.

’Something’s wrong. The China Team’s strategy today is very wrong!’

The Kazakhstan head coach was currently following not far behind the lead group.

Watching the four Chinese cyclists riding so recklessly, he felt a strange sense of unease for some reason.

Such anomalous behavior always signaled trouble, and the China Team’s tactics today were anomalous in the extreme.

Based on his previous understanding of the China Team cyclists’ strength, it was impossible that they would put all their riders in the breakaway group right from the start.

Like any other country, they would send one cyclist at most to join the breakaway.

That way, even if that breakaway rider couldn’t hang on and got dropped early, they would still have other riders in the peloton as a safety net.

The advantage of being in the peloton was being able to safely chase down breakaway riders who were constantly getting dropped, all while maintaining the time gap to the lead group. This would ensure that, in terms of the overall results, they wouldn’t finish the race with no riders crossing the line at all.

But for the China Team to have all their riders participate in a breakaway cruising at a speed as high as 46 km/h was, in the eyes of the Kazakhstan head coach, no different from suicide.

Because aside from Huang Chong, the other cyclists would never be able to finish a rolling course like the Tour of Qiandao Lake, with its countless short climbs. They would almost certainly all be dropped by a World Tour Cyclist like Lutsenko by the halfway point of the race.

And once they were dropped after two or three straight hours in a high-intensity breakaway, there would be no time left to recover their energy.

In the end, their efforts would only backfire, causing the entire team to collapse and get completely wiped out.

But knowing that this would be the outcome, why did the China Team still choose such an aggressive, all-or-nothing strategy?

He had to admit, the head coach of the China Team who devised such an extreme strategy must have incredible courage.

If the team was completely annihilated and none of them could finish the race, as the head coach of the National Team, he would absolutely have no way to answer to his country. Getting fired afterward would be getting off easy.