Chapter 82: Chapter 82: Defensive Counterattack, an Ultra-Long Solo Breakaway
Five road bikes began to fly down the flat, closed asphalt road.
The three riders from the Longjiang Team, clad in black jerseys embroidered with golden dragons, took the lead, pulling frantically at the front of the group.
They weren’t even considering the possibility of Liu Yunyou and Huang Chong coming up to take a turn in the rotation.
At this stage of the race, their tactic was crystal clear: attack, attack, and attack again!
The Hong Kong rider in the pink jersey gritted his teeth, sticking doggedly to the Longjiang Team’s wheels in fourth position.
His endurance was considerable. Though he hadn’t made the podium in the individual time trial, he had led his team to a second-place finish in the team time trial.
And the gap between them and the Longjiang Team had been minuscule.
It was clear his individual ability was nothing to scoff at, second only to the Longjiang Team riders.
As for Huang Chong, wearing the sky-blue jersey of the Zhejiang Team, he was positioned at the very back of the group.
To a layman who knew nothing about road cycling, it would certainly look like Huang Chong was having the hardest time of the five, since he was at the very back of the pack.
But for those in the know, choosing to sit at the back and draft was the smartest possible move.
The Longjiang Team riders weren’t surprised to see that after their efforts to create a separation, only Liu Yunyou and Huang Chong had managed to keep up.
In their minds, these were the only two riders who posed a real threat to their championship ambitions.
"Looking at this year’s championship as a whole, the Longjiang Team is an absolute behemoth. They’re just crushing everyone.
If they hadn’t lost the gold in the first individual time trial, they’d have swept the gold medals in every event so far.
And in the events where they’ve won, they’ve either taken the gold or swept both first and second place.
Their strength is so far beyond everyone else’s, it’s enough to make you jealous.
I just hope Huang Chong can handle the pressure and doesn’t get dropped by the high-intensity pace and rotation of those three."
In the Zhejiang Team’s tent, Xie Kun’s face was etched with worry as he watched the live feed from the camera moto.
When Chen Junyi watched the live feed, her attention was focused primarily on the real-time average speed provided by the race organizers.
She noticed the group of five, including Huang Chong, was currently moving at only about 45 km/h.
Then, she glanced at his riding posture, saw it was as stable as it was in training, and her worries eased.
As Huang Chong’s Data Analyst, she had all his daily training data.
Judging from the official average speed and Huang Chong’s form on camera, she could clearly tell he hadn’t yet hit the levels he reached during his most intense training sessions.
In her eyes, Huang Chong’s choice to sit at the back, drafting off the others and riding in their slipstream, wasn’t because he was about to crack and had fallen behind.
’Instead, he’s riding defensively, waiting and searching for the right moment to counter-attack.’
The camera moto was now focused entirely on the group of five.
The fierce battle between them was far more exciting than the leisurely, aerobic pace of the main peloton behind them.
The broadcast director was afraid of missing a single moment, a single tactical play that could decide the winner among the five riders.
The race had reached a fever pitch. If any rider’s resolve wavered for even a second, they would be dropped instantly.
After that, they would likely have no chance of getting back on.
Victory and defeat hung by a thread.
The three Longjiang Team riders kept rotating, upping the speed and frantically changing the pace.
Their goal was simple: use erratic shifts between aerobic and anaerobic effort to drop Liu Yunyou and Huang Chong.
They had trained together for a long time, and their tactics were all pre-arranged and systematically practiced.
Their muscles and cardiovascular systems were already well-adapted to these changes in rhythm.
For Huang Chong and Liu Yunyou, however, this bizarre, surging pace was something they were definitely not used to.
Even though they were drafting behind the Longjiang Team, seemingly saving energy by reducing wind resistance, the constant fluctuations in heart rate and power output were draining far more energy than cruising at a steady pace would.
Soon, the 20-kilometer seventh lap was coming to an end.
The Longjiang Team still hadn’t managed to drop Liu Yunyou and Huang Chong.
The two of them were truly formidable, stuck to the Longjiang riders like magnets.
But as the lap neared its end, a short, sixty- or seventy-meter climb appeared before them, and with it, their greatest test yet.
The moment they saw the climb, the three Longjiang riders exchanged a look.
The rider at the front, who had been pulling for a long time, led his teammates to the base of the short climb and then pulled aside, relinquishing the lead.
The rider who had been in second position immediately shot forward to take his place.
He switched his grip from the hoods to the drops.
He rose out of the saddle, tucked his aero-helmeted head down as far as possible, and arched his back.
Then, keeping his upper body stable, he began to hammer the pedals, his cadence jumping from over 90 RPM to triple digits.
He unleashed a near-kilowatt burst of peak power and charged at the short climb ahead.
His two teammates, of course, didn’t follow their attacking companion. Instead, they settled into a steady rotation.
As a competitor, Liu Yunyou of the Hong Kong Team saw the attack and had no choice but to respond, immediately getting out of the saddle and rocking his bike to follow.
If he didn’t respond, the attacker would launch a solo breakaway.
Then, the two remaining Longjiang teammates would surely control the pace of the chase group, constantly neutralizing his efforts, and then just ride with him to the finish to sprint for the silver and bronze medals.
Liu Yunyou, of course, wouldn’t let that happen, so he responded decisively.
Huang Chong, at the back of the group, had no choice either. He also got out of the saddle and gave chase.
As a member of a different team, he couldn’t just sit back and watch.
Otherwise, once Liu Yunyou caught the Longjiang rider, the two of them would work together to drop him.
Those two would surely form a temporary alliance, taking turns pulling at the front.
After all, a two-man sprint for the win offers much better odds than a three-man sprint.
And so, with this new attack, the eyes of every spectator were glued to Huang Chong and the other two.
...
"An attack! The Longjiang Team is attacking again! Yunyou, you have to hang on!"
"Come on, Yunyou! Get through this and you have a shot at the podium!"
Inside the Hong Kong Team’s tent, nearly every team member was shouting encouragement for Liu Yunyou, their voices trying to reach him across the distance.
The situation inside the Zhejiang Team’s tent was much the same.
As Huang Chong’s biggest fan, Zhou Zitong’s fists were clenched and his face was flushed as he shouted encouragement for Huang Chong!
Meanwhile, in the support areas for the three major Intercontinental Teams, the team managers stared unblinking at the live feed, completely transfixed.
They were all desperate to see who would survive this brutally difficult climbing attack and who would be the first to get dropped.
Seconds ticked by. As the three men put everything into their attack, rocking their bikes furiously, their average speed—which should have dropped on the climb—actually soared past their previous cruising speed of 45 km/h.
Huang Chong stuck to Liu Yunyou’s wheel, trying to get as much draft as he possibly could.
In an all-out effort like this, every tiny advantage was magnified.
Every extra second he spent in the draft, sheltered from the wind, saved him precious watts of power.
But with about fifteen meters left to the crest of the climb, Liu Yunyou suddenly hit his limit.
The Longjiang rider had finally broken him on the climb.
Huang Chong realized Liu Yunyou was slowing, unable to hold the Longjiang rider’s wheel. Without a moment’s hesitation, Huang Chong swerved out from behind him and shot past.
Then, holding nothing back, his legs—in concert with every muscle in his body—unleashed their maximum power, a force perfectly optimized by the System, as he launched his pursuit of the Longjiang rider.
At that moment, the crowd’s excitement exploded.
Everyone had assumed he would just hang on until the final sprint.
After all, for the past 150 kilometers, he had done nothing but draft, never once taking a pull at the front.
But now, with about 43 kilometers left in the race, he had launched a brazen attack on a short 3% grade.
The moment he attacked, he closed the gap on the Longjiang rider with the speed of a cheetah.
He had unleashed a massive burst of nearly 1200 watts, instantly erasing the gap and then surging past his opponent.
The spectators were left completely stunned:
"Holy shit, that burst was insane! He just ate that Longjiang rider for breakfast!"
...
"A Sprinting Burst like that has to be over a kilowatt. I’m telling you, his Power-to-Weight Ratio for those first five seconds must have been over 20!"
...
"Unreal! That’s just too fucking unreal! What kind of monster is he? He doesn’t even have a sprinter’s build, so how is his explosive power so high?!"
...
But just as everyone was marveling at Huang Chong’s attack on the climb, he crested the hill in the lead and didn’t let up on his anaerobic assault.
He kept hammering the pedals, piling on the power as he charged into the long descent that followed.
With a sustained output of six to seven hundred watts, his speed skyrocketed from 52 km/h:
65+... 70+... 75+
He only stopped pedaling when he reached the bottom of the descent and was about to enter a right-hand turn at an intersection.
Facing the 90-degree corner, Huang Chong guided his bike to the far outside of the road, then used his coasting speed to dive into the apex.
He shifted his center of gravity, leaning into an incredibly sharp angle. His front wheel, less than five centimeters from the curb, shot through the turn with the smooth, aggressive speed of a rocket. WHOOSH.
This sent another thrill of shock through the spectators.
His cornering was just so incredibly smooth.
At over 50 km/h, no less.
And so, after just one minute of an all-out attack—averaging a massive 650 watts with a Power-to-Weight Ratio of around 10.0—Huang Chong, looking like a god descended to earth, had opened a gap of several dozen meters on the Longjiang rider.
Then, as everyone watched, he returned to a seated position, brought his heart rate down to his lactate threshold, and settled into a power output of around 340 watts. He was beginning a long, solo breakaway for the final two laps.
