Tour de Langkawi: Guardini breaks winless streak on stage 3

Image 1 of 16

Andrea Guardini (Astana) put his crash of yesterday behind him to beat Theo Bos (Belkin) and win on stage 3 of the Tour de Langkawi.

Guardini launched his sprint earlier than anyone, forcing the rest to chase him down, but he was too fast leaving Bos to settle for second, with Yannick Martinez (Europcar) taking third place.

There was evident relief on the Astana rider’s face when he crossed the finish line, after taking his first win in a year. Guardini started the day with a small hole in his foot, after hitting the deck in the final 500 metres of stage 2. There was doubt if he would take the start, but he was reluctant to let his good form go to waste.

“I have good condition and with good condition I won’t go out of the race. Today was good,” he told Cyclingnews at the finish. “In the first part of the stage I had a lot of pain in my foot, but after my legs and condition got better. I thought that I could sprint with 20km to go, after the climb I had good legs. I wanted this win, because Kuala Lumpur is special for me. I won here over the last three years and today it is special.”

Bos, who won yesterday’s stage, says that there was little he could do to stop the Italian from taking victory. “In the final I had Brownie [Graeme Brown] and we were following some good teams,” he said to Cyclingnews. “In the end we were in a really good position. I tried to go myself, early, but Guardini came inside and had a lot of speed and then for me there was no chance.”

It was another hot day for the remaining riders with temperatures again nudging towards 40°. Despite the heavy crash at the finish of stage two only two riders failed to take the start, although, there were plenty of bandages and gauze on show.

Stage 3 would be the last chance for the sprinters to take the win before the following day’s summit finish. There would be two category four climbs to contend with, but nothing to really trouble the fast men.

Hoping to secure his place in the mountains jersey and possibly take the race lead, Matt Brammeier (Synergy Baku) went on the attack again. He was joined by five other riders, Patrick Facchini (Androni Giocattoli-Venuzuela), Jacque Janse van Rensburg (MTN-Qhubeka), Bradley White (UnitedHealthcare), Saufi Mat Senan (Terengganu) and Thomas Rabou (OCBC Singapore).

Facchini was the first to be dropped, due a mechanical problem. For the remaining five, the gap went up to 5:30, before the Colombia team set to work. With Brammeier in the bunch they needed to catch him to keep hold of the yellow jersey. Before he was finally pulled back into the bunch the Baku rider increased his lead in the mountain’s classification, took the lead in the sprint competition and moved into second place. It will still be all to play for at tomorrow’s summit finish.

With 15km to go, only White and Janse Van Rensburg remained from the leading group. They were able to hold off until the final kilometre, before the sprinters and their teams took control.

Results