Chapter 426 206: A Rich Application of Tactics: The 'Raise a Wolf to Subdue the Enemy' Plan

The good news was that Huang Chong knew that after the S5 Stage, he had a massive lead over Ben O'Connor in the general classification.

First, in the S1 Stage individual time trial, he had gained a huge 1-minute, 7-second advantage over O'Connor.

And at the end of the S4 Stage, he had utterly obliterated him on the long, steep concrete climb in the final section.

His final finishing time was a full 3 minutes and 41 seconds ahead of O'Connor. On top of that, since the S4 Stage was a standard stage, the winner received a 10-second time bonus.

So, adding all three advantages together, his current lead over O'Connor was just two seconds shy of a full five minutes.

With such a large time gap, he could afford to be magnanimous. For the sake of sportsmanship and professional courtesy, he had even mentioned in a pre-race interview that he intended to let the breakaway riders fight for the win on this stage, which was more suited for it—

But he wasn't Roglič, after all. There was no way O'Connor could overturn such a massive deficit in a single stage, much less steal his Red Jersey.

Another noteworthy detail about this stage was that the S6 Stage was being held in the southernmost region of Spain. And since Carrefour was one of the main sponsors of the Vuelta a España, the starting line for the day was, surprisingly, located at a local Carrefour supermarket.

For Huang Chong, this was a rather strange experience.

In his view, the rules for many foreign competitions were often bizarre, yet they also had a fascinating charm.

Once the race officially began, although today's stage was classified as a mountain stage and included a total of four officially rated climbs (one First Category and three Third Category), its layout was unique.

The most difficult climb, the First Category one, was positioned early in the race. Meanwhile, the three less-demanding Third Category climbs were all situated in the latter half, near the finish.

So, this type of stage was tacitly understood by all riders to be a "gift" from the race organizers, designed specifically for breakaway specialists.

In a Grand Tour, designing the course terrain is of the utmost importance. It's crucial to strike a balance so that riders of all specializations have opportunities to perform and reap some rewards.

They have to ensure there are suitable stages for every type of rider.

This is the only way to make the race feel dynamic and diverse.

Otherwise, if the GC contenders or flat-road sprinters claimed all the glory in a three-week Grand Tour, there would be no reason for anyone else to even show up.

Inevitably, you'd start to hear voices saying:

"If we knew from the start that our only role in the Grand Tour was to be pack fodder, we wouldn't have bothered coming at all—"

Of course, Huang Chong didn't understand this aspect of Western cycling culture right from the start.

But after he established a commanding lead in the S1 and S4 Stages, the team made a point of explaining these "unwritten rules" of winning when they laid out the tactics for the next day.

Fortunately, he had no objections after they explained it to him.

He wasn't the type of person who needed to hoard every prize and stage victory for himself.

Although he was now a Professional Cyclist for the Red Bull Sect, road cycling wasn't F1. He couldn't be the Verstappen of the cycling world.

On the contrary, this was actually a point where he needed to learn from Pogačar and Vingegaard.

Because even though those two were in a league of their own in Grand Tours, they almost always knew when to let a stage go.

It was like the saying goes: when you give someone a rose, the fragrance lingers on your hand. The same principle applied here.

Sixty kilometers into the race, the peloton arrived at the S6 Stage's only First Category Climb: Puerto del Boyar.

The climb was not easy: 14.7 km long with an average gradient of 5.5% and a maximum gradient of up to 8.2%.

However, since the first 60 km had been all Daping Road, forming a breakaway would have required attacking on the flats and expending a massive amount of energy. Consequently, no one had made a move at the start.

As Professional Cyclists, none of them were fools. The riders who were serious about getting into the breakaway for this stage had all conserved their energy, waiting until they neared the summit of this First Category Climb to launch their attacks simultaneously.

The result was, unsurprisingly, that a massive breakaway formed. Everyone had clearly heard Huang Chong's pre-race interview and knew he was willing to let this stage go. Thus, today's breakaway was unprecedented in size, swelling to a full 13 riders.

And right there among them was one of the Decathlon Team's co-leaders: Ben O'Connor.

While the Red Bull Bora Team was willing to let the stage victory go, they weren't about to leave themselves without a contingency plan.

Aldag sent the team's young rider, Lipowitz, to join the breakaway.

Placing a rider with solid climbing abilities like him in the breakaway was a crucial move.

Not only could he work to neutralize other riders, but he could also serve as the team's sharpest pair of eyes and ears on the road.

As long as Lipowitz didn't get dropped too early, he could constantly feed back real-time information on the condition of the other riders in the breakaway.

Besides those two, the other 11 riders in the breakaway included:

Marco Frigo of the Israel-Premier Tech Team.

Cristian Rodríguez of the Arkéa Team.

Urko Verad and Pablo Castrillo of the Kern Pharma Team.

Belshet Clément of the Decathlon Team.

Mauri Vansevenant of the Quick Step Team.

Jay Vine of the UAE Team.