Jakub Mareczko (Alpecin-Deceuninck) won the fourth stage of the Petronas Tour de Langkawi, sprinting across the line from a small group in Meru Raya after a crash in the run in split the field.
It was a tight win for the Alpecin-Deceuninck rider, with Rudiger Selig (Lotto Soudal) coming up alongside to take second, while Eduard-Michael Grosu (Drone Hopper-Androni Giocattoli) took third on the shop-lined street on the outskirts of Ipoh, Malaysia’s fourth biggest city.
The race is one where Mareczko, who came third in stage 2, has had considerable success, now having taken four victories across three editions.
“Our team worked hard from the beginning. We were looking for this stage today," the Italian rider told reporters in Meru Raya. "The victory today is the best way and we try also the next days to do the same.
“It was really close, because in the end it was so chaotic but my team left me in the best position for the sprint and in the end we did it.”
A crash took place near the front of the peloton with 1km to go, including stage 2 winner Craig Wiggins (ARA Pro Racing Sunshine Coast) – who later rolled over the line with blood on his legs and a scraped back – leaving some 20 riders ahead to dispute the sprint.
The 137.9km stage from Sabak Bernam to Meru Raya came after a decisive day for the overall contenders, with Ivan Sosa (Movistar) taking the Genting Highlands stage and a 23-second lead on the overall, and Hugh Carthy (EF Education-EasyPost) the only rival within two minutes.
After Friday’s largely uneventful stage up until the last kilometre crash, Sosa (Movistar) remains in the overall lead as Langkawi reaches its halfway point, with four days remaining.
How it unfolded
Stage 4 shifted the racing further north, extending the eight-day 2.Pro-ranked Malaysian Tour away from Kuala Lumpur and toward Langkawi. The start line was in the small town of Sabak Bernam, with riders setting off at 2:45 pm local time.
While stage 3 was one for the mountain specialists, Friday’s course was anything but delivering the first day of the race without a single categorised climb.
The hills and mountains, heavily forested terrain and long stretches of palm plantations with trunks teeming with ferns seen in the earlier stages began to give way to flatter terrain. The palms remained, but there were also rice fields stretching alongside the road with storks, called bangau in Malaysia, perched among them.
After a fast start three riders got away, Ricardo Zurita (Drone Hopper - Androni Giocattoli), Jambaljamts Sainbayar (Terengganu Polygon Cycling) and Ryuki Uga (Ukyo). Sainbayar took top points in the first sprint at 14.1km, narrowing the gap to the wearer of the white jersey of the best Asian rider, Andrey Zeits (Astana-Qazaqstan), to just seven seconds.
As the riders made their way through the large centre of Teluk Intan at 23km into the racing and across the Perak River, the second longest of Peninsular Malaysia, the trio’s advantage was over three minutes.
Through to the second sprint point at 60.6km and Sainbayar again took top points and bonus seconds, reducing the white jersey’s advantage to just four seconds but the gap from the peloton to the break had now dropped to 2:05.The same result materialized in the third and final intermediate sprint at 85.3km as well, bringing Zeits advantage down to just one second.
As the peloton approached Meru Raya, along with views of the mountains and craggy outcrops, a few small undulations crept in, Alpecin-Deceuninck, Astana Qazakstan and the UAE Team Emirates took over from Movistar, previously riding for race leader Ivan Sosa, at the front of the peloton and the group of three became a group of two when Uga got a flat tyre.
The sprinters’ teams working together had the gap to the leaders under control and the peloton was all together again at 12km to go and the positioning for the final run-in began. Lotto Soudal were notably present in numbers early on, while Movistar (riding for German sprinter Max Kanter), Astana Qazakstan and Uno-X ProCycling all made their presence known.
Despite the broad, straight roads leading to the finish, with no team taking control of the pack for long, the chances of a crash were never low. And at a kilometre to go, on a broad S bend a high-speed collision in the weaving bunch saw several riders go down and others forced to take major evasive action by going off-road. That carved off a small bunch, but Alpecin-Deceuninck were still present in numbers on the front to give Marezcko all the support he needed for the sprint.
After the last corner with less than 200 metres to go, Reinhardt Janse van Rensburg led out his Lotto Soudal teammate Selig into the finale. But even as the German fastman powered up the left-hand side of the very short finishing straight, Marezcko timed his late acceleration through the centre perfectly to claim the Italian’s third win of the year and 47th of his career.
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