Tour de Langkawi: Bevilacqua wins stage 7

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Simone Bevilacqua (Neri Sottoli–Selle Italia–KTM) upset the script on stage 7 of the Tour de Langkawi with the Italian winning his first professional race. A dog on the road inside the final 500 metres providing inspiration for Bevilacqua to launch a long sprint in a brief moment of chaos. The 22-year-old first to react, taking advantage of a gap in the peloton to steal a jump on the pure sprinters.

In the final 100 metres, Bevilacqua held off the fast finishing Charalampos Kastrantas (Brunei) and Craig Wiggins (St George). The trio upstaging their bigger name rivals to complete the podium on the penultimate stage of the race.

Yellow jersey wearer Ben Dyball (Sapura) finished safety in the bunch but there was a change to the podium with Hernán Aguirre (Interpro) dropping from second to fourth. Aguirre and teammates Charles-Étienne Chrétien and Maris Bogdanovics all penalised 40 seconds for drafting during the stage. Keegan Swirbul (Floyd’s) now sits second at 50 seconds to Dyball with Vadim Pronskiy (Vino-Astana Motors) moving into third overall.

"Four, five hundred metres to go I saw a dog in the middle of the road and the peloton opened a little," Bevilacqua said of the secret to his first professional win. "I can’t win a bunch sprint because I am not fast enough so this was the only way to win."

After the stress of stage 6, the penultimate stage was a far more relaxed affair for Dyball. The Australian confident of holding onto yellow and securing the biggest win of his career to date tomorrow afternoon.

"Today was a lot easier," Dyball told Cyclingnews. "We are already happy with the two stage wins and I will be happy to keep the overall lead."

The eighth and final stage of the Tour de Langkawi will start in Dataran Lang and finish in Kuah after 103.8km of racing. The riders to complete one finishing circuit in Kuah before the stage winner and general classification is confirmed on the finish line in the late afternoon.

How it unfolded

For the first time since 2015, Langkawi hosted a stage of the race named for the Northern Malaysian Island. The peloton assembling in a muggy Pentai Cenang for the anti-clockwise 106.8km circuit of the island.

Following the familiar early skirmish of the previous stages, a quintet of Luca Raggio (Neri), Alessandro Pessot (Bardiani-CSF), Nickolas Zukowsky (Floyd's), Grigoriy Shtein (Vino-Astana Motors), and KOM leader Angus Lyons (Oliver's) got clear to form the break. Chase attempts from the riders and teams who missed the break ultimately failing. At the first KOM 22 km into the stage, Lyons mathematically secured the classification with maximum points. The peloton passing the climb two minutes in arrear, content to let the breakaway ride.

A puncture for Shtein resulted in the Kazakh dropping back to the peloton, the breakaway trimmed to four. Halfway around the Island loop, the breakaway’s lead dipping under two minutes. As the sprint teams took up the chase, the breakaway splintered and Zukowsky went solo, holding off the the peloton until inside the final 10km.

Australian national champion Michael Freiberg then tired a flyer inside six kilometres but he too was brought back by a peloton intent on a bunch gallop. Despite the work from Bardiani-CSF and Gazprom in the final for the sprint, Bevilacqua surprised the peloton to claim his first professional victory via the lucky intervention from the stray dog.

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