Arvid De Kleijn (Tudor Pro Cycling) sprinted to victory in Port Dickson, taking his second win at this year's edition of Petronas Le Tour de Langkawi on stage 6.
Erlend Blikra (UNO-X Mobility) came second on the flat and short 123.5km stage to the waterside location of Port Dickson. Manuel Peñalver (Team Polti VisitMalta) took the final spot on the podium on what was a wet day of racing on the east of Peninsular Malaysia.
It started with a downpour and ended with De Kleijn taking his sixth victory across three editions of the race.
"It was hard to come in, in the wheel of Blikra, I really had to fight for it, but in the end, I won the fight," said De Kleijn. "It took some energy, and then I had to take all the way around to beat him, so I had to take a longer line but in the end, I had enough speed to beat him."
The wet conditions didn't bother the Tudor Pro Cycling rider but they took a toll elsewhere, with Matteo Malucelli (XDS-Astana) crashing early in the race along with Blikra. The UNO-X Mobility rider was fine to rejoin and contest the sprint but the same couldn't be said for the Italian rider, who had already claimed three stages in this year's edition, adding to his three of last year. He was out of the race and on his way to hospital for checks.
The team later said in a medical update that he had an injury to the lower third of the left shin as well as soft tissue damage around the right knee while X-ray and ultrasound examinations ruled out any fracture of the tibia, as well as any internal abdominal injuries.. The update added that the medical staff was hopeful he would be able to recover in time for the Tour of Taihu Lake, which starts on October 9.
Other riders out of the race also included Vadim Pronskiy (Terengganu Cycling) and Odd Christian Eiking (UNO-X Mobility).
A crash involving Matteo Malucelli (XDS-Astana) early on stage 6 (Image credit: Petronas Le Tour de Langkawi)
How it unfolded
The 123.5km stage on Friday from Shah Alam may have been a day for the sprinters, but it was clear that the GC riders would also have to be on their toes once the race moved away from the start line with a view of the blue and white spires of the Sultan Salahuddin Abdul Aziz Mosque, Malaysia's largest. That's because even while Thursday's stage 5 to Fraser's Hill had carved out a new shape for the overall competition, led by Joris Delbove (Total Energies), his nearest rivals were just six seconds back. That made the intermediate sprints, which come with bonus seconds – three for the winner, two for the runner-up and one for third – crucial. The battle lines for those bonus seconds were drawn at 25.2km, 36.9km and 85.6km on stage 6.
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Crashes, including the one that saw Malucelli leaving the race, rain and a split coloured the opening kilometres but when the first intermediate sprint approached and there was predictably a ramping up. Some of the top overall contenders and their teammates came to the fore, UNO-X among the move but missing out on the points while Yanis Voisard (Tudor Pro Cycling) snared the top spot and the three seconds on the now drying roads, a move that pulled him to within just one second of second and third-placed Anders Halland Johannessen (UNO-X Mobility) and Adrien Maire (Unibet Tietema Rockets). Clément Alleno (Burgos Burpellet BH) and Lorenzo Manzin (Total Energies) then claimed the next two spots.
XDS-Astana then set their eyes on the second intermediate sprint with Aaron Gate, Lev Gonov and Nicolas Vinokurov jumping off the front and running a mini team trial, with the squad who just lost their in-form sprinter turning the focus to the GC battle where Vinokurov was sitting at seventh by the end of stage 5, 14 seconds back from Delbove but only eight seconds back from the podium places held by Johannessen and Maire.
"He's not the strongest sprinter to take bonus seconds, so we have to maybe try and think a little bit outside the box," sports director Mark Renshaw told Cyclingnews before the start of the stage.
It was a successful tactic and move. Vinokurov scored the three points and three seconds, then the trio sat up and went back to the pack with Vinokurov now in fifth instead of seventh overall and trailing race leader Delbove by 11 seconds. The other riders on the podium were just five seconds away.
As the race moved onto 72km it was raining once again and this time it really barrelled down, showing just why the steep roadside drains are a necessity, but the attacks kept rolling.
Seven riders got away and built a solid gap, Adne van Engelen (Terengganu Cycling), Noppachai Klahan (Thailand CT), Mow Ching Yin (HKSI), Joseph Javiniar (7Eleven Cliqq), Aisan's George Matsui and Shinnosuke Kato plus Kee Zhe Yie (Malaysia). They stretched the gap to a little under two minutes, holding out front to sweep up the points in the third intermediate sprint, with Kee Zhe Yie claiming the top points and continuing to forge on beyond.
Still, by the time the race got to 35km to go the time was being pulled back quickly, and then the front group also started to be pulled apart. An attack from Kee Zhe Yie opened up a solo effort but he, like his former break companions, was also ultimately reeled in at just over 8km to go.
The scene was set for another bunch sprint, and while one of the key protagonists of the race was missing with Malucelli's absence, plenty of others stepped up to try and muscle into the action. Still, De Kleijn, who had been stymied by a stomach bug in the previous two stages, was clearly back in condition to fight for, and secure, his second win of the race and finish what has been a tough year, with a complicated collar bone fracture, on a high.
"It's super nice to go into the winter like this," De Kleijn told Cyclingnews. "You know, I had a really tough year, and it was mentally pretty hard, physically maybe even harder, and it's nice to finish it off already with two wins, but I'm also ambitious for the coming two days."
Runner-up Blikra, who has stood on the stage podium four times, moved into the points jersey given Malucelli's departure from the race, while Vinokurov remained in the jersey of the best Asian rider and Patrick Eddy retained the lead in the mountain classification.
The race continues on Friday with a 214.9km flat stage from Melaka to Medini.
Simone is a degree-qualified journalist that has accumulated decades of wide-ranging experience while working across a variety of leading media organisations. She joined Cyclingnews as a Production Editor at the start of the 2021 season and has now moved into the role of Australia Editor. Previously she worked as a freelance writer, Australian Editor at Ella CyclingTips and as a correspondent for Reuters and Bloomberg. Cycling was initially purely a leisure pursuit for Simone, who started out as a business journalist, but in 2015 her career focus also shifted to the sport.
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