Sjoerd Bax (Alpecin-Deceuninck) has won stage 7 of the Tour de Langkawi after bridging across to the riders from the early break and then taking victory on the Langkawi finish line from a three-way sprint.
Willie Smit (China Glory) claimed second and Adria Moreno (Burgo-BH) third on the 107.1km stage starting and finishing in Pekan Kuah, Langkawi's biggest town.
"I knew today was a good day for me. I arrived in Malaysia with good form and a lot of confidence after winning the Coppa Agostoni in Italy," Bax said afterwards.
"I suffered the heat at the beginning but now I'm fine. I hit on the right moment to come across today and reached the guys from the early breakaway."
It wasn’t the penultimate stage of racing that had initially been expected in the Tour de Langkawi, with landslides after heavy rain and flooding leading to its substitution after the tough Gunung Raya summit finish was ruled out. Still, even with only two category 3 climbs in the mix it was a hot and hard day of racing that split the field.
The splits also led to changes in the overall standings ahead of the final stage. Ivan Sosa (Movistar) remains in the overall lead and Hugh Carthy (EF Education-EasyPost) second, but Torstein Traeen (Uno-X Pro Cycling) moved up to third overall at 1:47 back while George Bennett (UAE Team Emirates) is now sitting just three seconds further back in fourth.
Stage 7 ended up being a close replica of the course that was planned for stage 8, the only difference being that one of the seven-kilometre finishing loops was cut out. At this point, Tuesday’s stage 8 is still planned to go ahead with three laps of the final circuit, making it 115 kilometres long in total.
How it unfolded
Stage 7 delivered the first of two stages on Langkawi, an archipelago to the west of Peninsular Malaysia with lush green hills emerging from the surrounding blue waters and folding into craggy cloud-topped peaks closer to the centre of the island.
The race had been due to spiral in towards one of those peaks, Gunung Raya. But with the changes brought about by landslides, the stage 7 course would instead consist of a series of varied loops out of Pekan Kuah: it first headed west, then made a large circuit up to the north and finally returned for a smaller 7km loop, tackled twice, close to Kuah and including a category 3 climb.
Early attacks came thick and fast but all were reeled back in on the undulating first loop which took riders out from the start line to the west, giving those who had time to catch glimpses of the sea. The bunch was all together for the first intermediate sprint at 30.8km as the western loop returned to Kuah, with Eduard Grosu (Drone Hopper—Androni Giacolatto) taking out top points.
However, three riders finally went clear on the larger loop which stretched round the northern side of the island, opening up picture-perfect views of water lapping on the shore of a tranquil palm tree-dotted beach as it did so, coupled with dramatic profiles of islands punctuating the blend of blue waters into blue skies. It was here that Moreno, Smit and Nichol Pareja (Philippines) got away and carved out a gap of over four minutes by close to halfway through the day of racing.
There were a number of attempts to bridge across as the peloton worked its way past a harbour and onto a small climb which - before the race came through - was teeming with monkeys, some lounging in the shade, some curiously attentive to passers-by.
Then at less than 30km to go the peloton split with the leading group of 17 chasers including Bax, Traeen, Bennett, Gianni Moscon (Astana-Qazaqstan), Ion Izagirre (Cofidis), Matteo Jorgenson and Max Kanter of Movistar, as well as David van der Poel (Alpecin-Deceuninck).
At 15km to go, using the first ascent of the category 3 climb on the small local loop, Bax quickly pulled away and then caught the break, which was now just down to Moreno and Smit as Pareja had been dropped.
The three worked together as the chase group behind split up when a number of riders leapt out in pursuit, forming a group of five with Bennett, Van der Poel, Moscon, Jorgenson and Kanter. The front trio, however, entered the final straight with a clear gap on the counter-attackers and ready to fight for the stage.
Smit launched the sprint but Bax ran up the barriers on the left to take victory, while the pursuit group of five came over the line ten seconds later.
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