Having already won in Gabon and Taiwan this season, Luca Pacioni continued his winning start to his Wilier Triestina-Selle Italia career with stage 6 victory at the Tour de Langkawi. Pacioni beat Riccardo Minali (Astana), who has two stages in the race this year, and Malaysian Mohd Harrif Saleh (Terengganu) to the win. Andrea Guardini (Bardiani-CSF) was fourth.
Artem Ovechkin (Terengganu) finished safely in the bunch and retains the yellow jersey over Ben Dyball (St George) with two stages to race.
"This is my most beautiful victory so far after I won the last stages of Tour of Taiwan and Tropicale Amissa Bongo," said Pacioni, a former Lampre-Merida stagiaire who joined the team from Androni at the end of last season.
"Now with these three victories I have shown the team that I can also be a sprinter and deserve respect as a sprinter. In the team we have Jakub Mareczko, he was winning sprints here the last two years, and he is faster than me. I am not a pure sprinter but I am not afraid of putting myself in the sprints."
For Terengganu, it was the team's first day defending a leader's jersey at HC level and passed with little stress. Third place for Harrif and tenth place for Metkel Eyob in the sprint ensuring a successful day all around.
"It was okay today. Bardiani took a lot of responsibility. They obviously wanted to set it up for Guardini so it was just a matter of making sure no one dangerous went up the road," TSG's Drew Morey told Cyclingnews of the day defending yellow.
"We had two guys up the road working with Bardiani-CSF and then some of the bigger teams took control which was nice for us."
Ovechkin, who described stage 6 as "an easy day", is sure to be tested on stage seven with six categorised climbs and 222.4 kilometres on the menu. The stage is expected to finish in a group sprint but the 2018 Tour de Langkawi is proving to be a race full of surprises.
How it unfolded
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After the transfer down Cameron Highlands, the peloton assembled in Tapah for stage 6 of the Tour de Langkawi. The shortest stage of the race at just over 100km was expected to see a return to the field sprint finals.
With no break forming by the first sprint and key seconds on offer for the GC riders, Astana's Yevgeniy Gidich stole in behind Jacob Hennessy for two seconds with Amanuel Ghebreigzabhier claimed third and one second. The time bonuses would not change the top-ten overall, at least for for now.
Perez Perez (7/11), Amir Mustafa (Forca Amskins) and Genki Yamamoto (Kinan), with Drew Morey (Terengganu) in pursuit, came close to initially the day's breakaway. Turakit Boonratanathanakorn then made his solo move with Perez launching a late bid to join the Thai rider. Boonratanathanakorn pushed on alone at the halfway mark of the race as the rains begun to fall and quickly saw his lead reach 2:30 minutes. Wang Bo (Hengxiang) wasn't fazed by the time gap and also tried to bridge, albeit unsuccessfully as he was stuck in no man's land.
At the sole categorised climb of the day in Felda Besout, Boonratanathanakorn had 3:20 minutes as the rain continued to fall. The sprint teams came to the front of the peloton to control the move, bringing his lead down to 1:30 minutes with 20km to race.
There was added drama to the catch as Andrea Guardini suffered a mechanical and a number of attacks were launched from the peloton before Boonratanathanakorn was swallowed up with five kilometres to race.
Guardini's Bardiani-CSF squad took up the reins in the finale but it was Wilier Triestina-Selle Italia and Luca Pacioni taking the victory following excellent lead-out work by Eugert Zhupa. Pacioni becoming the fifth winner in six stages of the 2018 Tour de Langkawi and third Italian after Guardini and Minali.
You can read more at Cyclingnews.com
via Cyclingnews Latest Race Results http://www.cyclingnews.com/races/le-tour-de-langkawi-2018/stage-6/results
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