July 9th.
After all the teams coming to Qinghai for the competition had trained and acclimated in Doba Town for two days, the race officially kicked off in Xining City.
After signing his name on the riders' wall, Huang Chong made his way to the starting arch, ready to set off with all the other cyclists.
His rider number for this race was 16, while Brother Xiaoma's was 15.
As a warm-up, the first stage was a city circuit race, so the difficulty was naturally not high.
Not only was the average gradient per lap just 0.7%, but the total vertical ascent over the entire 108.8 km was only 455 meters.
Besides, during the first stage, everyone was full of energy and very excited.
Huang Chong stayed firmly in the peloton, just drafting along, not bothering to contest the two intermediate sprint points worth 5 sprint points each, nor the final stage victory.
This kind of flat stage wasn't his specialty anyway.
