Tour de Langkawi: Penultimate stage victory for Mareczko

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After six different winners in six stages, Jakub Mareczko broke the Tour de Langkawi trend of 2017 and claimed his second win of the race. The Wilier Triestina rider repeated his Rambau victory of 2016, holding off Travis McCabe (UnitedHealthcare) and Andrea Palini (Androni Giocattoli).

A second wet stage in as many days tested race leader Ryan Gibbons (Dimension Data) who sprinted to fifth. He will start the final day with a 24-second lead over Cam Bayly (IsoWhey Sports Swisswellness).

The victory also saw Mareczko take over the lead in the sprints classification that he is aiming to defend on the final day circuit."I don't know what will happen tomorrow because all the sprinters will be different," he said of the stage 8 sprint. "The points jersey was my objective for this tour so today I take it and try tomorrow to keep it."

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For Gibbons, it's one day closer to sealing the overall victory and, again, one he was happy to finish without losing time or hitting the deck.

"I was feeling very good today, my team was really good today and it was just more caution today in the wet. It is really easy to go down so stay upright and out of trouble was the priority for today and we did that,” said Gibbons.

Finishing in the top six all in five sprint stages thus far, McCabe explained to Cyclingnews that the Italian was simply too good today, tipping his hat to the 22-year-old. "It was the perfect finish for him. He just beat me. I am content with second," said McCabe. "He is fast, you can't really complain when you lose straight up in sprint like that."

The eighth and final stage of the race will see the peloton start in Setiawangsa and before the circuit finish in Putrajaya.

How it unfolded

A fast start to stage 7 was inevitable, as it provided one last opportunity for a breakaway and a reshuffling of the GC before Wednesday's circuit race in Putrajaya.

The aggressive beginning of the stage saw numerous attacks, a split in the peloton and a mass crash all before the first sprint point of the day. At the intermediate sprint point 25km into the stage, Gibbons' third place saw him add one second to his overall lead.

A six-man break managed to get a small gap after the sprint point but with Lorenzo Rota (Bardiani-CSF) and then Tim Roe (IsoWhey Sports SwissWellness) bridging across, the peloton realised the danger of letting them go clear and brought it all back together again. Counterattacks followed off the front of the bunch as a new five-man break formed.

Greg Henderson (UnitedHealthcare), Jacopo Mosca (Wilier Triestina), Loh Sea Keong (Thailand), Huang En (Keyi Look) and Dominic Perez (7 Eleven Roadbike Philippine) were given the go-ahead from the bunch and pulled out a 1:30 minute lead a little over 50km into the stage. With that advantage, Mosca became the virtual leader of the race. The gap between the break and peloton hovered between 1:30 and two minutes as the rain started to fall at the 100km mark. As the rain continued, the advantage of the quintet fell, which was reduced to four as Perez called it a day.

Henderson and Mosca decided to trim the break further and forged on ahead together as their advantage dipped down to under one minute with 30km to race.

The duo then sat up on the approach to the third and final climb of the stage in Bukit Miku with eight kilometres to go. Over the climb, the sprint teams came to the fore with positioning key in the wet weather and technical final. On the final straight, it was Mareczko who had the staying power to hold off McCabe for his second win of the 2017 race.

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