For the first time at the 30th edition of Le Tour de Langkawi the break prevailed, with Petr Rikunov (Wheeltop Rotor Chengdu) leaping from the leading group of three in the final kilometre to take his first UCI win of the season on stage 4.
The race to the top of the Cameron Highlands was expected to be one for the climbers, but a group of six who were no threat on the overall were let drift away, and that ultimately dwindled to three through the final effort to the line.
The power of Rikunov's surge shook off his rivals, though Javier Ibanez (Caja Rural-Serguros RGA) kept up the pursuit as long as possible to claim second, three seconds behind, while it was Alan Jousseaume (TotalEnergies) who took the final podium spot at nine seconds back. Nil Gimeno (Equipo Kern Pharma) then took fourth, 28 seconds behind, after having drifted away from the front through the final kilometres
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"Today we had three really good with Caja, with Kern, with Total. But I think today was a really good, good day for us," said Rikunov, adding that everyone was pulling and going 'full gas' all day to keep the gap. "But yeah, I have more strong legs today in the last km."
GC leader Lennart Jasch (Tudor Pro Cycling) finished safely with the group of 32, which contained all the key overall players, so kept his 20 second advantage to Abel Balderstone (Caja Rural-Seguros RGA) and the 38 second gap to his teammate Jan Castellon.
"With like 2km's to go the attacks started a bit but before it was quite controlled because ... the climb is not so steep so you have so much draft that it's really hard to get away," Jasch told the media after the stage.
The 142.3km day of racing from Meru Raya took the riders into the the lush central Malaysian jungle and threw a little of everything at the peloton, from heat and stinging sun at the start, then initially flat conditions to solid rain and a slight cooling of temperatures as the road headed toward the long ascent to the finish, The final 50km presented little relief from the climbing.
Even though the second of three summit finishes for the race may have been the focus of this stage, as has been the case every day at this ProTour event, in the opening stages there was no shortage of riders eager to go out in the break making it hard to control a wave after wave gave it a shot. In the end Javier Ibanez (Caja Rural- Serguros RGA), Nil Gimeno (Equipo Kern Pharma), Petr Rikunov (Wheeltop Rotor Chengdu) and George Matsui (Aisan) were the ones to make it stick.
There was, however, an early crash behind involving a number of riders, including Mattia Gaffuri (Picnic PostNL) – sitting in seventh overall, and Fernando Gaviria (Caja Rural-Seguros RGA), who continued on but were certainly showing the signs of having hit the deck. Owen Geleijn (Unibet Rose Rockets), on the other hand, was forced to abandon straight away with his team posting on social media that he had headed to hospital for medical checks and fortunately there were no broken bones, but stitches and to his chin and elbow along with abrasions to his chest.
Ade Meisa (Nusantara) and Alan Jousseaume (TotalEnergies) bridged, to make it a group of six up front in what was now becoming an on and off rain-soaked race. The gap had stretched by the time the climbing began, though it dropped down to a group of five, with Meisa drifting back to the peloton and Tudor Pro Cycling pushing a high tempo on the climb, but by 25km to go the gap to the lead group was still 4:20. Then Matsui also drifted and finally Gimeno was unhitched right near the final throes of the stage, making it a three way battle in the final kilometre.
More to come ...
