Tour de Langkawi: Guardini beats Ewan to win stage 1

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Andrea Guardini's (Astana) love affair with the Tour de Langkawi continued into 2015 as he outsprinted Caleb Ewan (Orica GreenEdge) to take the first stage and the leader’s jersey.

At the end of the 99km anti-clockwise loop of the main island of Langkawi off the north west of Malaysia, the Italian latched onto Ewan’s wheel with 200m to go and comfortably outpaced the young Australian.

It takes his tally of victories at the race to 15, a remarkable return from four editions and one stage.

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“It’s a special race for me because it comes in a good period after a few races – Dubai, Qatar, and Oman so I always have good legs,” said Guardini after the stage. “I’m really happy to win the first stage. The team is so strong and I’m in a good shape for winning. We worked really well and we are here to win more.”

Despite a bunch sprint being widely predicted given the length of the stage, the breakaway stayed out for some time, with the last survivor being caught just 2km from the line. Astana and Orica shared the bulk of the work to bring things back together but then Guardini took full advantage of his rival team’s lead-out efforts in the final stages.

“Caleb is a strong rider and he has a really strong team for lead-out in the sprint,” said Guardini. “We don’t have the same powerful team for the final but we have a good rider to stay at the front and catch the breakaway. One sprint is always different to the other but we try to take the best wheel day by day. Today it was for sure the train of Caleb Ewan, tomorrow it may be another train – we’ll see.”

The temperature hit 35 degrees Celsius on the stage and if Guardini thrives in such heat it’s thanks to the work he puts in during the colder winter months.

“I say that I’m really good in the heat, and today I didn’t suffer a lot. For sure I come here with good shape and this comes after a really good winter and now I’m taking the results of all my work in the winter.”

How it unfolded

The moves started as soon as the flag dropped and inside the first 10km a six-man group went away, formed of Kiel Reijnen (UnitedHealthCare), Simone Andreetta (Bardiani-CSF), Adiq Husaini Othman (Terengganu), Guangtong Ma (hengxiang), Meher Hasnaoui (Skydive Dubai) and Liam Bertazzo (Southeast).

Reijnen was first over each of the three cat-4 climbs on the route, scooping up the maximum king of the mountains points and taking the red jersey. Bertazzo similarly dominated the three intermediate sprints, and will look after the blue points jersey while Guardini is in yellow.
The group built a gap of around two minutes but it started to wane with 20km to go. At that point the riders looked to mix things up, Bertazzo first attacking before Hasnaoui and Reijnen made a two-man move stick. Inside 4km Reijnen sensed that an unlikely victory was on the cards and went solo but his advantage wasn’t sufficient.

“When the stage started I just went for the KOM jersey but I didn’t think we had a very good chance for the stage,” he said. “Towards the end I saw the opportunity to go and in this race if you have the opportunity you take it. Astana and GreenEdge wanted the sprint so it was always going to be touch and go, but I gave it a good try and I’ll try again.”

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