Le Tour de Langkawi: De Kleijn sprints to victory on stage 4

Arvid De Kleijn (Tudor Pro Cycling) sprinted to victory on stage 4 of the Tour de Langkawi in Bentong, outpacing stage 2 winner Matteo Malucelli (JCL Team Ukyo) at the line.

The Dutchman claimed his fourth win of the season at the end of the flat 131km stage with Manuel Peñalver (Polti-Kometa) rounding out the podium.

The bunch sprint finish was set up late on in the stage after the six-man breakaway, which included Stefan De Bod (EF Education-EasyPost), Joan Bou (Euskaltel-Euskadi) and Manuele Tarozzi (VF Group-Bardiani CSF-Faizanè) was caught just 300 metres from the finish.

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In the end, Tudor's lead-out proved the best among the sprint squads, with Maikel Zijlaard leading out his countryman to take the win.

Despite missing out on the stage glory, Malucelli continues to lead the points classification with 34 points to De Kleijn's 30. Max Poole (DSM-Firmenich PostNL) continues in the overall race lead with a six-second advantage over second-placed Thomas Pesenti (JCL Team Ukyo).

"It was a hard day, starting with the climb where I think that a lot of sprinters suffered to go over, and after with the strong break," De Kleijn said after the stage. "We had to pull really hard to catch them, but the guys did an incredible job. In the end, I had only Maikel left for the lead-out, but we know how strong he is and I just had to focus on the sprint.

"I am very happy, especially after the first two stages where I made some mistakes. Sprinting here is different than in Europe but it’s a good learning to do these high-speed sprints. I'm happy to finish it off today. There’s more to come and I look forward to the next sprints."

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