Chapter 399 197: Riding Professional Road Cycling onto the CCTV Live Broadcast Channel

The men's event proceeded quickly. After all, the number of participants in the Olympics is limited.

It's not like the Tour de France, where every entrant—over a hundred of them—all have to compete.

The men's ITT at the Olympics only had 34 participation slots in total.

And as it turned out, two riders withdrew: Plapp from Australia and Søren Wærenskjold from Norway.

So the entire event was smoothly concluded in just over two hours.

The women's ITT competition followed immediately after. The entire course route, including the distance and so on, was exactly the same as the men's, also requiring a ride over 32.4km of purely flat roads.

Tang Xin, as the sole representative for the China Team, started in a relatively early position based on the ranking from the registration forms.

At Coach Han's invitation, Huang Chong watched the race from the support vehicle, where he was also responsible for communicating with Tang Xin via radio.

Unlike the mass start road race, radio communication is permitted in the ITT.

However, even the most sound tactical communication could hardly make up for the gap in raw strength. In the end, Tang Xin's average completion speed only reached 42.269 km/h.

This result was quite good among current female Chinese cyclists, but on the world stage, it truly wasn't enough to stand out.

Thus, after finishing her race, she only sat on the hot seat for a short while before her top time was immediately surpassed by a subsequent rider.

In the end, after all 35 riders in the women's event had competed, Tang Xin's final result was only 32nd place.

As for the first-place gold medal winner, it was Grace Brown from Australia,

with a finishing time of 39 minutes, 38.24 seconds, and an average completion speed of 49.045 km/h.

Her level of performance not only put her a massive minute and a half ahead of the silver medalist, but even when compared to the men's ITT, she was faster than Girmay, who had just won the Dash King Green Jersey at the Tour de France—

Of course, Girmay himself was not an ITT specialist, and his country, Eritrea, only had him as a competitor.

Knowing he had no chance of winning a medal in the time trial, choosing to conserve energy for the mass start road race was by no means an unwise decision.

"Sigh, our country's road cycling level, for both men and women, is still a significant and obvious distance from the world's best!"

Coach Han couldn't help but sigh amidst the misty drizzle of Paris after seeing the final published rankings for the women's ITT.

"It's a good thing our country has you, Huang Chong. Otherwise, let alone competing for medals in these international competitions, even getting the most basic qualification spots would be extremely difficult!"

Hearing this, Huang Chong didn't know how to console Coach Han.

But in all honesty, he really had fought tooth and nail last year to help secure these two qualification spots for the Paris Olympic Games.

However, for the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics four years from now, as long as he hadn't retired by then, China would definitely be able to secure qualification spots with ease.

After all, his current ability was already at the top tier of the World Tour.

And as a team leader, as long as he competed, he could basically rack up a large number of UCI points every year.

In any case, it certainly wouldn't be difficult to use his own individual points to secure one or two qualification spots for the country.

Time flew by. After the ITT competition ended, it was already August 1st in the blink of an eye.

During this time, Huang Chong maintained his daily training routine, bringing Lü Xianjing along with him each day.

When he had free time, he would also go with Chen Junyi to other event venues to watch and support their fellow countrymen.

Although he was a professional Road Cyclist, he was also very interested in many other sports.

He loved tennis, for example, which was why he had come to Roland Garros today specifically to watch the quarterfinal match between Zheng Qinwen and the former world number one, Köbler.

Even though he already knew the final result, watching the whole process was still a heart-pounding experience.

The score in this match was just too close.

It was far more intense than Zheng Qinwen's next match, the win against the current world number one, Swiatek.

And speaking of which, fate really is a magical thing.

Before the Olympics, Zheng Qinwen had actually lost to Swiatek six times in a row and had never beaten her in her professional career.

Yet, of all places, she managed to topple her opponent in the most important competition of all—the Olympics.

As Huang Chong thought about this, even though Zheng Qinwen's official match against Swiatek wasn't until tomorrow, he couldn't help but think:

'It would be great if I could topple Pogačar at the Tour de France next year, too.'

After all, his record against the latter this year was also a series of one-sided defeats. Whether it was the Liège Race or the Tour de France, he had lost by just a hair's breadth.

However, after he finished watching the match and returned to his training facility, the Red Bull Bora Team, with its headquarters far away in Germany, announced some good news today: his contract extension with the team, and that Narváez would be joining the Red Bull Bora Team starting next season.

For the fans in China's road cycling circles, these two pieces of news were undoubtedly quite exciting.

Huang Chong's contract renewal, although the team didn't reveal the specific salary, was a long-term contract for five years. In the world of professional road cycling, this was the kind of treatment reserved for star riders.

For an ordinary rider, unless they were truly exceptionally talented with unlimited potential, it was rare for a team to offer a five-year contract directly. The common practice was to sign one or two-year contracts.

And Narváez joining the team brought a wave of delight to the domestic fans.