Cycling: Racing into the Headwind

Chapter 171: Chapter 123: Reaching the Pinnacle of Asia, Double-Killing the Former Cycling King (Part 2)

Sitting beside Dewey, Zhou Ming heard the question and answered without a second thought.

"Don’t ask such a stupid question, Dewey.

How could you possibly maintain an average speed of over 30 km/h on a 5% climb without putting out a kilowatt of power?

But I really didn’t expect your brother to get this lean and still have such explosive power!

I’ve heard it’s relatively easy for people to improve their endurance, but explosive power is mostly innate.

A lot of people have brute strength, but they can’t focus it all and unleash it in a single burst—"

"You’re the one being stupid. My brother’s a Professional Cyclist now; how could he not know how to control his power?"

Dewey scoffed and continued,

"The only problem now is how he’s going to drop this foreigner.

You’ve got to admit, this Lutsenko guy is seriously strong. Huang Chong hit him with several powerful anaerobic attacks and still couldn’t crack him!

The guy’s like a piece of superglue!"

"Heh, I think you’ve got it backward. Lutsenko is the World Tour Cyclist here.

Huang Chong is very strong, but he hasn’t even joined a World Tour Team yet. For now, he’s just the challenger."

"Tch, a ’mere’ World Tour Team? Once my brother wins this championship, joining a World Tour Team will be a piece of cake."

If Dewey had boasted about Huang Chong like this before, Zhou Ming would have definitely ripped into him.

After all, there are only 18 World Tour Teams in the world, with a maximum of 30 riders per team. And some of those spots are reserved for their own development riders.

That means an international Road Cyclist needs to be ranked among the top 500 in the world just to be eligible to join a World Tour Team.

How could that possibly be easy?

But now, having seen with his own eyes how Huang Chong not only avoided being dropped by the "Asian King of Cycling" in the first half but actually launched repeated kilowatt-level counterattacks on the hardest climb of the course, Zhou Ming knew in his heart that Huang Chong had most likely reached the level of a World Tour Cyclist.

Not to mention, he had already snatched a gold medal from Lutsenko in the ITT.

This guy was no longer the person from last year who could only fantasize about the World Tour as some distant dream.

He was now just one signed contract away from competing in the five Monuments and three Grand Tours he’d always talked about.

Still, Zhou Ming would never admit defeat to Dewey out loud, so he retorted stubbornly,

"Well, it’s not too late to say that after he’s won the race and signed a contract."

...

After pulling Lutsenko into a two-man breakaway, Huang Chong descended to the foot of Zitong Ridge. There were still about 70 kilometers to the finish.

But the route ahead was almost identical to the road conditions of the first 125 kilometers.

It was a relentlessly undulating series of short climbs, each only a few dozen meters high, up and down, over and over again.

This constantly rolling terrain was an undeniable test of a Professional Cyclist’s endurance.

After all, on such short climbs, one could ease the difficulty by shifting gears in training, but in a race where every second counts, it was impossible to constantly change ratios.

Especially since Huang Chong had to stop Yevgeniy from catching them from behind. So, for the nearly 30 remaining short climbs of just a few dozen meters each, he planned to power through them all in the same gear, riding anaerobically out of the saddle.

Thankfully, he had ridden so many difficult mountain passes at high altitudes that he was completely adapted to climbing. Plus, his energy had been restored after eating an Energy Bar, so there was still hope he could grind his way through the final 70 kilometers of rolling hills.

Although Lutsenko had managed to hang on to Huang Chong’s wheel since Zitong Ridge, he was starting to struggle as they neared the finish. Huang Chong was frantically driving the pace, holding a cruising speed of 50 km/h at 380 watts, and Lutsenko was finding it hard to keep up.

At the beginning of the year, he could have ridden a paltry two-hundred-kilometer race at 380 watts without breaking a sweat.

But after a full year of high-intensity racing, on top of grinding out a 50-minute ITT just two days ago, he was physically running on fumes.

For a Professional Cyclist, winter training is an undeniably crucial period.

They need to maintain a certain training intensity to keep their form, but also get enough rest to prepare for the upcoming season.

But Lutsenko had come to China for the Asian Games almost immediately after his World Tour season ended, without a single day’s rest. So when Huang Chong, who was comparatively fresh, dragged the pace up to 50 km/h for the final 70 kilometers, Lutsenko finally began to show signs of cracking with just 10 kilometers to go.

He started gesturing frantically to his National Team’s support car, desperate for a high-carb drink and an Energy Gel.

There were two final, back-to-back short climbs between him and the finish line.

However, just as the team car pulled alongside him and a coach handed a bottle out the window, Huang Chong, who was leading the duo, saw his chance. Before Lutsenko could even grab the bottle, Huang Chong decisively jumped out of the saddle, unleashing another kilowatt-level burst of power and instantly opening a gap.

Seeing Huang Chong’s cunning move, Lutsenko, who had just grabbed the bottle, didn’t even have time for a sip. He quickly slammed it into his bottle cage and jumped out of the saddle to give chase.

Huang Chong knew he couldn’t drop him with a single climbing sprint. He just wanted to deny him any opportunity to refuel.

After all, Lutsenko was a classics specialist, just like Gelber; he had no shortage of short-burst sprinting power.

The only thing he could do was prolong his anaerobic attack, forcing Lutsenko to spend the final climb fending him off, with no chance to refuel.

So, for this climbing attack, Huang Chong knew he couldn’t stop. He had to keep pulling for as long as he possibly could.

Everyone watching the live broadcast, especially his family, was on the edge of their seats, fists clenched, afraid to even breathe.

Even the usually bubbly and active Huang Lingshan was now curled up like a quiet little kitten, clutching a pillow and staring intently at the television screen.

Even if she didn’t understand road cycling, seeing on the screen that Huang Chong and Lutsenko were less than ten kilometers from the finish, she knew that after more than four hours, the race had reached its fever pitch.

In fact, her big brother’s attack could very well decide the winner right here and now!

And so, with a grimace of pain etched on his face, Huang Chong gritted his teeth and pushed on. Through the two consecutive short climbs in the final 10 kilometers, he rode on the verge of collapse. Then, with just thirty or forty meters left to the crest of the final climb, Lutsenko—who had failed to get his final feed as planned—was finally dropped.

The two of them had been riding wheel-to-wheel, practically joined at the hip, ever since Zitong Ridge. But now, with Lutsenko being the first to crack from exhaustion, the gap began to slowly widen:

5m—

10m—

15m—

18m—

But that was the biggest gap he could manage before he crested the climb and hit the final, gentle descent.

He glanced back at Lutsenko, who was only a short distance behind. Without a second thought, he tossed both of his water bottles to the side of the road. Then he clicked his shifter, dropping the chain to the smallest cog, and began to pedal furiously down the descent, raising his cadence to over 100 rpm in an all-out sprint!

Whoever designed this course was a real piece of work. From the top of the final climb to the finish arch, it was all a gentle descent followed by a flat run-in.

So, if you got dropped on that final climb, trying to close the gap on the descent would be incredibly difficult.

After all, who can’t ride fast downhill on a straight road?

And so, with the eyes of the entire nation watching the broadcast and the fans at the finish line waiting in anticipation, Huang Chong rocketed down the gentle descent. He hit speeds of eighty to ninety kilometers per hour before finally reaching the flat, hundred-meter-long finishing straight.

Behind him, only 20 meters back, Lutsenko had used the descent to recover from his fatigue.

He set his sights on Huang Chong ahead and stomped on the pedals, giving everything in pursuit.

As they both hit the flats and launched their final anaerobic sprints, the gap between them began to shrink, the change almost visible to the naked eye.

It was obvious that Lutsenko’s maximum power output was still considerably stronger than Huang Chong’s in a flat sprint.

But trying to close a 20-meter gap over just 100 meters was an incredibly tall order.

In the end, amid the deafening cheers of countless fans at the scene, Huang Chong managed to cross the finish line first by a hair-raising half-a-bike-length.

This meant he had defeated Alexey Lutsenko in both men’s road cycling events at the Asian Games. Not only did he sweep the two gold medals, but he had also supplanted Lutsenko to successfully claim the title of Asia’s best!