Chapter 461: Defending the 6th Championship While Becoming the Best Lieutenant (Part 2)

The Dash King Green Jersey was not an honor a climber could hope to claim.

Of course, such an honor—winning all three jerseys—was just icing on the cake. Achieving it wasn’t a definitive measure of a rider’s ability.

So, after a moment’s thought, Huang Chong let it go.

‘Some things are best left to chance.’

After Ineos took control at the front, the overall pace of the race quickened noticeably.

The third climb of the stage began at the 73.5-kilometer mark. It was a Second Category climb: the Karakol Pass (Alto del Caracol).

It was 10.7 kilometers long with an average gradient of 5.5%, with its steepest sections reaching 9.3%.

However, this climb wasn’t a continuous ascent. Between the three and four-kilometer marks, there was a full kilometer of descent at a -6.6% gradient, making it an undulating section.

Even so, with Ineos controlling the pace, the peloton had already clawed back 40 seconds on the breakaway group before even starting the long climb. The time gap had shrunk to 5 minutes and 27 seconds.

By the end of the Second Category climb, the Ineos Grenadiers Team’s determined chase had cut the breakaway group’s lead to just 3 minutes and 46 seconds.

They had clawed back 2 minutes and 20 seconds in less than 20 kilometers. When the GC teams truly decided to push, the result was terrifying.

After the first three climbs, it was worth noting that the UAE Team’s Vine had taken first place at every summit.

This meant that in the live mountain classification standings, he had overtaken his teammate Soler to virtually claim the Polka Dot Jersey.

Of course, this was only temporary.

The race was far from over. Plenty of points were still up for grabs on the three remaining First Category Climbs.

The good news was that during the Second Category climb, Vine, his teammate Soler, and Clemente Bette of the Decathlon Team had accelerated. They dropped all the other breakaway riders and established a lead of roughly one minute, pressing on toward the four remaining climbs.

But their move undoubtedly sent ripples through the race.

For instance, as the trio deliberately accelerated, the gap to the peloton widened back to over four minutes after the Second Category climb.

Faced with this situation, the Quick Step Team stopped holding back. Their domestiques decisively took over from the Ineos Grenadiers Team to control the pace.

By the end of Stage 19, Landa’s rank in the general classification had already slipped from an initial fifth place all the way down to ninth.

They surely wanted to fight to improve their standing in this final conventional stage.

And so, on the first of the First Category Climbs—the Lunada Pass (Portillo de Lunada)—the Quick Step Team successfully cut the breakaway’s lead back down to just three and a half minutes.

Immediately after, they continued to push hard on the descent following the First Category Climb. This allowed the peloton to shrink the breakaway’s advantage to under three minutes before the fifth climb even began.

The fifth climb, the Xiya Pass (Portillo de la Sia), was another Second Category climb, with its summit at the 111-kilometer mark.

It was 7.2 kilometers long, with an average gradient of 5.8% and a maximum gradient of 7.3%.

Overall, it wasn’t a particularly difficult climb, but at this stage of the race, the peloton was clearly preparing to attack in the final stages.

So the Quick Step Team continued to push hard on this climb. They caught numerous breakaway riders, leaving only five up the road, and the time gap was cut to just 2 minutes and 25 seconds.

With two First Category Climbs still to come, this time gap was certainly manageable.

Although the breakaway group still included a super-rookie like Castrillo, the peloton was now well aware of his capabilities. If they decided to mount a serious chase, he would have no chance of staying away.

However, after the Xiya Pass and a long, 20-kilometer descent, the peloton began charging toward the penultimate ascent: the Los Tornos climb (Puerto de Los Tornos). This was the only First Category Climb on the stage to offer time bonuses. It was then that Huang Chong heard two pieces of terrible news from his sports director over the radio.

Their team’s only two flat-road domestiques, Gampa and Denz, had been forced to abandon the race due to food poisoning.

Although he no longer needed flat-road domestiques at this stage of the race, hearing about his teammates withdrawing one after another was still incredibly demoralizing.

It wasn’t just Huang Chong who felt a sense of dread. His fans, seeing the official withdrawal notifications pop up on the Vuelta a España live feed, were all blasting the Red Bull Bora Team for their terrible logistics, unable to even guarantee the safety of their riders’ food—

Of course, at the heart of it, Huang Chong’s fans were worried that their idol might also get food poisoning.

If Huang Chong were forced to withdraw this close to his first-ever Grand Tour victory, they would absolutely flood the comment sections of every one of the Red Bull Bora Team’s official social media accounts.

“Oh, damn it, what’s going on with the Red Bull Bora Team?

Their riders are dropping out one by one from food poisoning?

This is Stage 20 of the Vuelta a España, and they’re dropping the chain at a time like this.

I hope their leader isn’t affected. I’d hate to see a phenomenal new talent get caught up in such an amateurish blunder and lose his first Grand Tour title!”

Steve, a commentator for European Sports, couldn’t help but vent on the live broadcast after seeing the notification.