Locking Up the Polka-Dot Jersey Early: Crushing the Competition in Both Strength and Strategy

After Huang Chong launched the attack, he had no intention of stopping before reaching Nie Family Ridge, the Category 1 climb point at an altitude of 3,520 meters.

But his anaerobic sprint was not a full-throttle, kilowatt-level effort from the very start.

Over a distance of 150 meters, if it had been a flat section, he would definitely have sprinted all the way through.

But on a difficult 6.9% climb, maintaining an all-out anaerobic sprint over such a long distance was simply too hard, and far too much of a gamble.

So when he saw that his attack had drawn every team leader into going all out with him, he decisively lowered his power slightly, holding it between 700 and 800 watts and surrendering the lead.

Meanwhile, when he saw the leaders of Colombia's Medellín Team charging at the front, he quickly tucked in behind them to draft.

His goal was not to win in one blow. He wanted to disrupt the leaders of the other teams and destroy their plan of waiting until they were as close as possible to the Category 1 climb point before sprinting.

Among these foreign riders, although the flatland sprinters had all been dropped on the earlier climbs, there were still plenty of powerfully built Classics specialists in the peloton.

At the Asian Championships, Huang Chong had been thoroughly suppressed by Kazakhstan's Classics rider, Gaierbo, and had lost the championship.

He knew all too well how great an advantage Classics riders had over GC riders in sprinting. Having suffered once before, he certainly did not want to hang on with riders of that type from other teams until they were only eighty meters, or even fifty meters, from the Category 1 climb point before competing in an all-out anaerobic sprint.

That was why he