After the team time trial ended, the Zhejiang Team riders were visibly in low spirits over dinner that night.
The reason needed no explanation. If not for Huang Chong's exceptional individual strength, battling the headwind and dragging them along for nearly 50 kilometers, the five of them would absolutely have finished dead last among the ten participating teams.
After that brutal day of racing, they finally realized just how weak they were on a national level without Huang Chong serving as their cover-up.
At the dinner table, Xie Kun saw that everyone had fallen silent and did not know what to say.
In truth, as the coach leading the team, having a rider whose strength far surpassed everyone else's left him with mixed feelings.
The good part was that Huang Chong had his back. With a gold medal already secured, he had exceeded the bureau's requirements for his performance record, and the champion's bonus was already in hand.
The bad part was that it truly made tactical planning difficult.
Huang Chong and the other five were simply not on the same level. There was no way to devise proper tactics around them.
Xie Kun had watched Huang Chong's performance throughout the day. He had truly sacrificed himself for the team, relying on his own strength to withstand the bitter winter wind and carry the entire team forward.
Without his gritted-teeth effort, they would not have finished ahead of last place in the TTT standings.
After all, the gap between them and the last-place team had been merely a few seconds—truly a matter of inches.
Fortunately, more than half of the championship schedule had already passed. The men's senior division had only one final mass-start race left the next day, and only Huang Chong and Wang Bao needed to compete.
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