Thinking 'a bit outside the box' – From domination to deliberation as XDS-Astana tackles unwelcome plot twists at Le Tour de Langkawi

Two days ago XDS-Astana were undoubtedly in pole position as Petronas Le Tour de Langkawi headed toward the queen stage. They were flying high with three impressive stage wins from Matteo Malucelli, after just four stages.

They also had high hopes for GC card Aaron Gate as he seemed to have set himself up perfectly on the rankings by snaffling a bunch of bonus seconds in the intermediate sprints to ease his path.

"The morale of the of the team is definitely high, and we just want to keep it going for the rest of the race. It's been a good first half, and now we have to finish the second half strongly too," Gate told Cyclingnews in Temerloh before stage 5 when he was sitting third on GC as the leading overall contender behind two sprinters, teammate Malucelli and Erland Blikra (UNO-X Mobility).

There was no doubt taking on the GC, given a category 1 climb finish ahead on Fraser's Hill, would be a big challenge for the rider from New Zealand, who was also an integral part of the sprint lead out team.

"Today is going to be a bit of a dice roll on this climb, like on paper it's sort of at the upper limit from what I've normally capable of, but I'll be having a good crack," Gate said just before stage 5.

"And the good thing is we've also got Nico Vinokurov coming off the back of the Vuelta, and he was climbing really well there, so we've sort of got him as another option to play for the climb if it does become too hard for a trackie like me," said the Tokyo Olympics team pursuit bronze medallist with a wry smile.

Gate, who is on his third block of Asian racing this season, found there came a point when trying to match it with the climbers became too big an ask. The rider, who joined XDS-Astana at the start of the season with a one-year contract, dropped 1:37 on stage 5, leaving him totally out of GC contention, falling from third to 26th.

"Gate was kind of just missing 5 percent to be in that front group," XDS-Astana Sports Director Mark Renshaw told Cyclingnews at the start of stage 6.

Still, as Gate was falling away from that front group, word passed to Nicolas Vinokurov over the radio that the team's chances on the stage rested on his shoulders. The 23-year-old came fourth, an impressive performance but just one place short of grabbing a four-second time bonus, leaving him in seventh overall.

When asked if there was any disappointment with the way things turned out on stage 5 Renshaw said: "So maybe we're not disappointed, because obviously it's been a good tour, but personally, Gate is probably a little bit disappointed not to just make it over the steep section with the guys, but now with Nico, we have to wait for an outside chance."

Vinokurov was 14 seconds back from race leader Joris Delbove (TotalEnergies) at the end of stage 5 and eight seconds away from the overall podium but that's no small margin to make up when what's left of the race are stages that are expected to end with bunch dashes. A swathe of intermediate sprint bonuses may have proven a boon for a rider like Gate, but they aren't exactly easy pickings for Vinokurov.

On top of that, winning in the sprint with Malucelli was still the priority for the team headed into Thursday's stage 6.

As rain fell in the early kilometres of stage 6, Malucelli''s ability to do his job in the 2.Pro race in Malaysia came to an abrupt end. The Italian crashed and all of a sudden in two days the team had lost its status as one of the overall favourites and also its envied position in the sprints.

Malucelli was out with an injury to the lower third of the left shin and soft tissue damage around the right knee, and XDS-Astana had lost a sprinter who seemed almost unassailable in Malaysia.

Though there was no sitting back and bemoaning the loss of the rider who was so able when it came to drawing in the victories. The chase to make the best of the situation quickly came to the fore.

It was just a short distance after Malucelli crashed, and just as the peloton had stalled after the first intermediate sprint, that Gate, Lev Gonov and Vinokurov launched in a break, working together to stay out front so they could sweep up the second round of intermediate sprint points, just 11 km after the first. The result was that Vinokurov moved up to fifth, dropping the deficit to race leader Delbove to 11 seconds and the gap to the bottom steps of the podium to just 5 seconds.

Renshaw had said at the start of the day that: "He's not the strongest sprinter to take bonus seconds, so we have to maybe try and think a little bit outside the box."

They did and it worked. Even though 'plan A' crumbled, the targets were quickly reset. If the "outside the box" thinking continues ,who knows what the last days before the race ends in Kuala Lumpur shall bring.