So, Imaizumi – just what exactly did you accomplish?  Happy with yourself?

I’m pretty darn pissed right now, even though the final result of the first day of the Inter-high didn’t come as a big surprise.  Imaizumi’s stupid and selfish decision to hep drag his most dangerous competitor to the front cost his teammate a chance to win the stage (one could argue Kuroda was stupid and selfish too, but we’ll get to that in a minute).  What Imaizumi did was so fundamentally wrong on so many levels, both in terms of the sport and the story, that it’s going to be hard to get past it as far as my take on his character is concerned.

What’s really going to piss me off, though, is if there are no repercussions for what Imaizumi did – from his “captain”, from Naruko, from himself.  The lack of leadership from Teshima is obvious, but that excuse can only go so far.  If Yowapeda skates right past this I’m going to be very annoyed indeed, though I fear that may be exactly what happens.

As for Kuroda, where I have a problem with him is that this is a three-day race, a tour – and if he destroys himself trying to capture the first day, how is that helping his team?  If he’s supposed to be the lead-out man for the ace, the lieutenant, he’s screwed his team over not just by destroying himself trying to catch up (though he did snooker Hotshot into helping) but also by literally destroying himself scraping the fence around the last two corners and then crashing after Ashikiba made his move.  This is day one, dammit.  Even so, though – how can it take that long for someone to go help the guy?

Ashikiba, then, had the edge over his two rivals in many ways – he’d had to do less work to get to the lead thanks to Imaizumi and had fresher legs.  He also didn’t have the burden of an extended sprint battle having sapped his energy – the human body can only produce so much adrenaline.  He’s obviously also very good and very fast – he’d have to be to have taken the ace role at the #1 cycling powerhouse school in Japan.  And thematically, all signs pointed towards Ashikiba being the guy to take that sprint – it would have been an upset to me if it hadn’t happened.

What’s going to be interesting now is how the two beaten rivals deal with this.  Midousuji may be starting to realize that for all his bravura and bravado and arrogance, he doesn’t actually win these showdowns most of the time.  As for Naruko, at least he didn’t lose to Chimera-kun again – as bad as Ashikiba and HakoGaku pipping him is, losing to the same guy in a sprint after working so hard would have been even worse.  But Naruko hasn’t won much of anything that I remember – someone (Imaizumi, Tadokoro, Midousuji, now Ashikiba) always seems to best him in the end.  How will he take this latest defeat – will his confidence shatter?  And once he learns the truth of how it happened, will there be bad blood between he and Imaizumi?

Miso Shiromake: