This was really a tale of two episodes, if you ask me.  The first part was all Midousuji and his Machiavellian mercurial machinations (all of which were squarely in the mainstream of road racing strategy), and it was robustly entertaining.  The second got bogged down in a little too much Imaizumi-worship, and then threw in the dreaded pre-finish line flashback sequence, and unsurprisingly paid the price for it.  It’s a bit of a tightrope Yowamushi Pedal is walking these days.

Midousuji isn’t done toying with poor Mizuta’s heart as the episode kicks off.  His original plan has been foiled, but he still sees a use for his “captain” as bait – bait to try and lure the other teams (especially Hakone Gakuen, which has a clear advantage) into trying to race hard for the king of the mountains tag.  And of course it works, because normally calm Ashikiba-san resists the idea of letting any of the other teams “steal” one of HakoGaku’s tags.  Yuto actually defies his sempai’s orders to chase down Mizuta (who’s really a sitting duck), reasoning that it’s not worth using up even a domestique on a mountain tag with the second day’s finish line only a couple of kilometers past it.  So Ashikiba goes himself, and manages to reel in Mizuta without a problem but uses up some of his mojo in the process.

From my perspective, I’m not even totally convinced that the Day 2 line is worth all this fuss – it’s all about winning on the third day, isn’t it?  I’m also not convinced Ashikiba really is spent (we’ll see) but as for Sohoku, their strategy is to send Imaizumi after Midousuji, since Onoda-kun isn’t especially strong on descents.  For whatever reason I still have a bit of a struggle buying into Imaizumi as the ace – if he’s the one riding for the line on Day 3, that’s going to feel anti-climactic for me.  As is, he’s really reaping the benefits of his teammates tireless work to be able to battle for the second day’s line – but then, that’s pretty much how team racing in grand tours works, so I suppose it’s realistic.

It seems that all this has caused Yuto-kun’s faith in Ashikiba to waver a bit – and he’s a first-year without a whole lot of respect for his elders as is.  Ashikiba was the exception to that, and indeed he’s comported himself rather splendidly in this race up to now.  I guess, if anything, this illustrates the burden HakoGaku carries as the elite team in the race – they’re expected to compete for every line and they’re not allowed to try and win ugly.  That burden may already have cost them last year’s inter-high, and maybe we’re being set up to see that happen again.

Zutsuumake: