Tour de Langkawi: Ovechkin wins Cameron Highlands queen stage

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The Terengganu Cycling Team has secured its first ever stage win and leader's jersey at the Tour de Langkawi courtesy of Russian Artem Ovechkin. The former Katusha rider only joined the Malaysian team earlier this month and proved a worthy addition as he took a solo win at Cameron Highlands.

Ovechkin made his move 25km from the line and, having caught the remnants of the breakaway, held off Ben Dyball (St George) by 28 seconds and Amanuel Ghebreigzabhier (Dimension Data) by 55 seconds. Adam De Vos (Rally) dug deep but was unable to defend yellow and dropped out of the top ten overall.

"We do training camps here with TSG and the Malaysian team. He won a race in Turkey about a month ago so we said come on, let's see if you can win Tour de Langkawi," TSG's sports director Jeremy Hunt told Cyclingnews. "In our dreams, our plan was to win a stage and the overall. We still haven't done that but what happened today was amazing."

Unsure of the climb's difficulty and the strength of Ovechkin, the Russian's two-minute lead was cut on the line by the chasing group, but his margin was still enough to move into yellow.

"The chase group hesitated a bit too much in the middle of the climb, you can't bring back two minutes in a few kilometres… It's one of the longer climbs I've done, probably the last nine kilometres is hard. Most of the beginning is just rolling flat parts but it's definitely a tough climb," Dyball told Eurosport of the chase group's effort.

For Dimension Data, there was no repeat of the stage win from last year. Ghebreigzabhier, though, is just two seconds off the podium placing with the African Continental champion poised for his best GC result to date.

"My feelings were good in the climb so I tried many times and the group is split many times. With my condition, I am so happy with my performance," he told Cyclingnews.

After the sole mountain stage of the race, stage 6 of the Tour de Langkawi from Tapah to Tanjung Malim is another day for the sprinters.

How it unfolded

In Betong for the start of stage 5, Kaden Groves was the only DNS with the remaining 120 riders in the race signing on for the queen stage. From the gun, Johan van Zyl attacked solo to provide a reminder of Dimension Data's presence in the race despite losing Mekseb Debesay to a fractured pelvis the previous day.

Van Zyl's move would prove short-lived with the aggressive start to the day continuing past the first sprint point at Raub 30km into the stage. A five-rider move went but it wasn't the chosen break for the day. Instead, the sextet of Luca Wackermann (Bardiani-CSF), Juan Felipe Osorio (Manzana-Postobon), Massimo Rosa (Wilier Triestina), Zheng Zhang (Hengxiang), Muhammad Zawawi (Sapura) and Muhammad Elmi Jumari (Malaysia) would form the day-long breakaway after the second sprint point.

The leaders enjoyed a maximum lead of three minutes on the flat roads to the Cameron Highlands climb before the GC teams started to ramp up the pace in preparation for the ascent. With 30km to go, Zhang was the first rider dropped from the break with Astana cutting the breakaway's lead to 1:30 minutes.

With 25km to race, Osorio and Wackermann distanced their former breakaway companion. The peloton was 1:45 minutes in arrears when Artem Ovechkin made his winning move and bridged across to the two leaders. Having made contact with 20km to race, Ovechkin and Osorio then rode away from Wackermann.

Ovechkin, who was suspended in 2013 for testing positive to Fenoterol, quickly went solo as the peloton's deficit increased to two minutes behind the now virtual leader of the race. Only then did the reaction come from the peloton with the likes of Dyball and Ghebreigzabhier forming a chase group of eight. On the run into the line, Dyball was the quickest but ran out of road to catch Ovechkin. Behind the Australian, Ghebreigzabhier was the only other rider inside one minute of the winning time.

Despite missing the top-10, Harry Sweeny held on to his third place. The top two places overall are likely to remain unchanged but the top-10 is far from settled with three stages to race.

For TSG, the acrimonious post-stage fight in its hometown of Terengganu quickly forgotten, the result was its best yet since forming in 2011. 

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