Li Ning Star’s Luke Mudgway may not have won the Queen stage of this year’s race, but the outsider certainly left his mark on the roads of Hainan’s central highlands
“Unlucky Luke, what a ride out there today,” a familiar voice calls out to the Li Ning Star rider.
A visibly dejected Luke Mudgway has been sitting on a cool box for the best part of a few minutes when Aaron Gate makes his way down the road to comfort his Kiwi compatriot and former Bolton Equities Black Spoke teammate. The pair have been the main animators of a thrilling Queen stage at the XDS Cup Tour of Hainan, but whilst one has soared to victory, the other has had his dreams cut short.
“Ah, thanks,” responds Luke, getting to his feet to hug the Burgos-BH veteran and stage 3 winner. “Did you win, mate?”
With a nod of the head and a quick rundown of his ‘late flyer,’ Gate recounts the final kilometre which saw him surprise his rivals with an attack, delivering him not only the stage honours but the overall lead of both the general classification and points classification. It is a far cry from Mudgway’s fate, which saw the Li Ning Star rider spend 50km on his own at the front of the race before succumbing to his chasers on the final climb of the day.
Hearing of his friend’s success, Mudgway’s face cracks into a smile, with congratulations soon sent the 33-year-old’s way. It has been a chastening final hour for the rider with one professional win to his name, but should anybody have to capitalise on his disappointment, he can find solace in the rewards falling to a close mate from New Zealand.
“It’s a bit too humid this week so I’m pretty punished right now. I am pretty gutted, really gutted actually,” Mudgway tells 7Cycling a couple of minutes later, the thought of ‘what might have been’ etched across his face.
“But that’s bike racing, I am happy another Kiwi won at least.”
It is a measured statement from the 28-year-old, a rider clearly saddened by the missed opportunity but satisfied at having left everything on the road in Wuzhishan. A final placing of 26th on the toughest stage does not do justice to Mudgway’s ride, one that will rightfully be remembered as one of the strongest of the race.
Local preparation pays off for the Chinese squad
Despite only being in his first season with the Chinese Li Ning Star team, Mudgway is no stranger to the roads in this part of the world. The Kiwi has twice before ridden the XDS Cup Tour of Hainan and as he notes to 7Cycling, his team have spent the last seven days riding over the hills that would colour the third day of racing at this year’s race.
“We came here a week before this race and we just stayed in this city, so we trained around here all the time. When I attacked, I kind of knew the whole road coming up to the climb and the twists and turns, so I thought that if I could get a gap, I could probably build on it,” he explains.
With around 60km of Thursday’s stage remaining, Mudgway decided to attack from the unsuspecting peloton and within a matter of moments, the 28-year-old had amassed a lead of well over three minutes. As Mudgway explains, the idea was to take advantage of Astana Qazaqstan’s weakness and use his local knowledge to offer him the best chance of going it alone to the finish.
“I saw Astana had probably three guys that had been riding for a while, and then through the ups and downs coming around this 90km circuit, I saw those three that were riding kept dropping. That kind of left them with four [men] and then we had one steep climb before we turned left and went down a winding descent.
“So I just attacked as hard as I could up that steep climb and then railed every corner from there and didn’t look back. The gap just went out and out and out.”
Mudgway falls just short of crucial race to the summit
For the next half an hour, the gap between Mudgway and the peloton behind remained at a constant three minutes. Despite Astana Qazaqstan’s best efforts, the WorldTeam could not muster the firepower to reduce the group’s deficit to the Li Ning Star man, offering up the exciting prospect of a surprise winner on a day that was ostensibly tilted towards the climbers.
Inside the final 20km, Mudgway began the final climb and for the first half of the 10km ascent, the advantage still looked to be in the Kiwi’s court. With a gap of three minutes over the ever-dwindling group behind, time was fast running out to catch Mudgway before the stage finish in Wuzhishan City. It was at this point, however, that things went pop for the underdog.
“One team must just have started riding really hard and I’d been out front for probably over 40km already on my own. I tried pushing more and more and more but the top of the climb just seemed to get further away. They caught me at 1km to go and that was me, I had given it everything. It was close. I knew that if I’d gotten to the top of the climb [alone], I’d have been fine because I knew the descent pretty well. I was just fighting to get there and I didn’t quite make it.”
The 28-year-old grimaces as he remembers his suffering on the Category 1 climb.
“There are a lot of guys who get to sit in the group for the 40/50km before the climb, and they have fresh legs on the climb to just go full gas. I matched them for half the climb and then I could begin to tell the legs starting to go. The team car told me I had 6/7km left until the top and I thought, ‘Uh oh.’ That’s bike racing, at the end of the day.”
With a kilometre to go of the final climb, Mudgway was swamped by a group of more than 20 riders who had been led by St Michel-Mavic-Auber93 in pursuit of the Kiwi. The French team’s work would ultimately only be rewarded by a fifth-place finish for their sprinter Alexandre Dellettre, but what it did ensure was the demise of Mudgway’s ambitions on the stage.
Caught by the chasers and exhausted by his efforts, Mudgway could only ride to the finish some 57 seconds behind the stage winner, Gate. One Kiwi was heading to the podium and the other could seek comfort only from a nearby fire engine that was bathing the riders in cold water.
His efforts on stage 3 will perhaps go unnoticed in the record books, but for those who watched his leap of faith from roadside or followed his attack over the race radio, Mudgway’s brave move will live long in the memory. For the Kiwi, his long solo attack can be chalked up as experience gained and yet more fond memories created on the roads of Hainan.
“This race is lovely, I didn’t get to enjoy it too much today but over the last week, I have. It is my third time here in Hainan, so I have seen everything around here and it’s a really good part of China. I love coming here and racing.”
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