Tour de Langkawi: Pacioni wins stage 6

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Having already won in Gabon and Taiwan this season, Luca Pacioni continued his winning start to his Wilier Triestina-Selle Italia career with stage 6 victory at the Tour de Langkawi. Pacioni beat Riccardo Minali (Astana), who has two stages in the race this year, and Malaysian Mohd Harrif Saleh (Terengganu) to the win. Andrea Guardini (Bardiani-CSF) was fourth.

Artem Ovechkin (Terengganu) finished safely in the bunch and retains the yellow jersey over Ben Dyball (St George) with two stages to race.

"This is my most beautiful victory so far after I won the last stages of Tour of Taiwan and Tropicale Amissa Bongo," said Pacioni, a former Lampre-Merida stagiaire who joined the team from Androni at the end of last season.

"Now with these three victories I have shown the team that I can also be a sprinter and deserve respect as a sprinter. In the team we have Jakub Mareczko, he was winning sprints here the last two years, and he is faster than me. I am not a pure sprinter but I am not afraid of putting myself in the sprints."

For Terengganu, it was the team's first day defending a leader's jersey at HC level and passed with little stress. Third place for Harrif and tenth place for Metkel Eyob in the sprint ensuring a successful day all around.

"It was okay today. Bardiani took a lot of responsibility. They obviously wanted to set it up for Guardini so it was just a matter of making sure no one dangerous went up the road," TSG's Drew Morey told Cyclingnews of the day defending yellow.

"We had two guys up the road working with Bardiani-CSF and then some of the bigger teams took control which was nice for us."

After the transfer down Cameron Highlands, the peloton assembled in Tapah for stage 6 of the Tour de Langkawi. The shortest stage of the race at just over 100km was expected to see a return to the field sprint finals.

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