The good news was that Huang Chong knew full well that after Stage S5, he held a massive lead over Ben O'Connor in the general classification.
First, in the S1 Individual Time Trial, he had taken a huge advantage of 1 minute and 7 seconds directly from O'Connor.
Then, at the end of S4, he had utterly crushed him on the long, steep concrete climb in the final stretch.
His finishing time had been 3 minutes and 41 seconds ahead of O'Connor's, and since S4 was a standard stage, the winner also received a 10-second time bonus.
Adding all three together, he now led O'Connor by just two seconds shy of a full five minutes.
Such a vast gap meant that even though, for the sake of sportsmanship and social courtesy, he had told reporters before the race that he intended to let the breakaway riders fight for victory on this stage, which was better suited for breakaways—
he was not Primož Roglič. It was impossible for O'Connor to overturn such a huge GC deficit in a single stage, let alone take his Red Jersey.
Another noteworthy point about this stage was that S6 was held in the southernmost region of Spain. As one of the Vuelta a España's main sponsors, Carrefour had actually been chosen as the starting location for today's stage.
It was quite a novel experience for Huang Chong.
In his view, many rules in foreign races could be utterly bizarre at times, yet somehow wonderfully interesting.
Once the race officially began, although today's stage was a mountain stage and included four officially categorized climbs in total—one Category 1 climb and three Category 3 climbs—
the toughest Category 1 climb came early in the route, while the three relatively ordinary Category 3 climbs were all located in