After the two hosts of Eurosport's road cycling channel had thoroughly covered Huang Chong's personal information and career results during the live broadcast, the man himself had already been riding with the peloton on the roads of South Australia for nearly 20 km.
Then Huang Chong realized that this season opener in South Australia was fucking hot.
One look at his system bike computer showed a real-time temperature of 33°C.
Yet the race had started at 11:20 in the morning.
That meant the 144 km course would take them at least three hours, putting the finish sometime after 2 p.m. Given how unbearably hot it already was, Huang Chong did not need to guess that this was nowhere near the day's peak temperature. It was only the beginning.
In midsummer, the hottest part of the day was usually between 1 and 3 p.m.
Damn it, Australia's scheduling is brutal. They actually put the race in the hottest part of the day. What are we, livestock?
Huang Chong could not help grumbling inwardly.
Soon, he reached the 24 km mark with the peloton. The first intermediate sprint was just ahead, but the sprinters from the major teams only made a token effort before completely losing interest in fighting for it.
As a result, the three-second time bonus at the first intermediate sprint was taken by UAE Team Emirates climber Finn Fisher-Black.
This bizarre display of mutual restraint was undoubtedly caused by the heat.
No one dared to burn themselves out early in such high temperatures.
After the peloton passed the first sprint point, only then did riders begin trying to break away.
There were two of them: Louis Barré of Arkéa–B&B Hotels and Georg Zimmermann of Intermarché–Wanty.
Meanwhile, as the race went on, Huang Chong, who did not need to fetch