Tour de Langkawi: Seo Joon Yong takes solo win in Kuantan

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Joon Yong Seo (KSPO) soloed to victory on stage 5 of the Tour de Langkawi, attacking from the day’s breakaway with 25km to go to become the second Korean rider to win a stage of the Malaysian race.

Jamalidin Novardianto (Pegasus) and Adiq Husaini Othman (TSG), in his home region of Terengganu, were second and third from the rest of the break, which had formed 50km into the 200km route from Kuala Terengganu to Kuantan.

With no one in the eight-man group within 25 minutes of the race lead, yellow jersey Caleb Ewan (Orica-GreenEdge) was happy not to give chase, while Astana, working for triple stage winner Andrea Guardini, were similarly reluctant to commit.

“I’m so proud of myself,” said Seo. “Three years ago I got second place in Kuantan, only 11 Asian riders have won a stage here. I try to win every time I race the Tour de Langkawi and today I got the win.

“Today began very fast. I tried to follow the [breakaway] group and we worked well together and made a good gap. I was surprised at the time board, a very big gap of 14 minutes, [and thought] why is no one chasing? In the last 50km the gap was big and I thought today is a good chance for a stage win. Then with 25km to go I decided to break away.”

Ewan described how the efforts of yesterday’s chase had made him and his Orica-GreenEdge teammates unwilling to expend their resources again today.

“Today we didn’t want to do the same and commit all our guys to the front to bring back the break. If other teams wanted to bring it back for the sprint then we might have helped them but no one was really keen to chase, everyone was kind of watching each other and no one really committed.

“It was alright for the guys to have a day off - 200km on the front would have been a long day and they could have been too tired for the rest of the tour and ruin the rest of the stages. We weren’t going to do it all by ourselves.”

Since Friday is a religious day for Muslims, tomorrow’s stage is a shorter affair, taking the riders 96km inland to Karak, where we should see a return to a bunch sprint.

How it unfolded

With a tailwind propelling the riders down the east coast of Malaysia, 30km were covered in just over half an hour but attacks weren’t sticking. Eventually Seo, Novardianto and Othman were joined by Yasuharu Nakajima (Asian Racing), Patria Rastra (Pegasus), Meher Hasnaoui (Skydive Dubai), Juan Molano Benavides (Colombia), and Sea Keong Loh (Malaysia). It was soon apparent they would be away for the day as the gap went out towards the 18-minute mark.

Three Chinese riders, Guangtong Ma, Bo Wang (Hengxiang) and Li Jun Bai (Giant-Champion System), formed a chasing group but were unable to get within five minutes of the leaders.

Up the road the group cooperated well for the best part of 125km but as soon as Seo caught sight of the 25km to go sign he was off and the others dithered. He carved out a lead of 13 seconds and while there was frantic action behind him he succeeded in staying away.

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