The Terengganu Cycling Team has secured its first ever stage win and leader's jersey at the Tour de Langkawi courtesy of Russian Artem Ovechkin. The former Katusha rider only joined the Malaysian team earlier this month and proved a worthy addition as he took a solo win at Cameron Highlands.
Ovechkin made his move 25km from the line and, having caught the remnants of the breakaway, held off Ben Dyball (St George) by 28 seconds and Amanuel Ghebreigzabhier (Dimension Data) by 55 seconds. Adam De Vos (Rally) dug deep but was unable to defend yellow and dropped out of the top ten overall.
"We do training camps here with TSG and the Malaysian team. He won a race in Turkey about a month ago so we said come on, let's see if you can win Tour de Langkawi," TSG's sports director Jeremy Hunt told Cyclingnews. "In our dreams, our plan was to win a stage and the overall. We still haven't done that but what happened today was amazing."
ADVERTISEMENT
Unsure of the climb's difficulty and the strength of Ovechkin, the Russian's two-minute lead was cut on the line by the chasing group, but his margin was still enough to move into yellow.
"The chase group hesitated a bit too much in the middle of the climb, you can't bring back two minutes in a few kilometres… It's one of the longer climbs I've done, probably the last nine kilometres is hard. Most of the beginning is just rolling flat parts but it's definitely a tough climb," Dyball told Eurosport of the chase group's effort.
For Dimension Data, there was no repeat of the stage win from last year. Ghebreigzabhier, though, is just two seconds off the podium placing with the African Continental champion poised for his best GC result to date.
How it unfolded
You can read more at Cyclingnews.com
via Cyclingnews Latest Race Results http://www.cyclingnews.com/races/le-tour-de-langkawi-2018/stage-5/results
No comments:
Post a Comment