Reinardt Janse Van Rensburg wins Tour de Langkawi
Reinardt Janse Van Rensburg has claimed overall success at the Tour de Langkawi with Andrea Guardini (Astana) winning the eighth and final stage of the race in Malaka.
After yesterday’s very long stage, the race ended with a much shorter 119km run from Batu Pahat to Melaka. With no categorized climbs during the coastal run, it was completely flat and the race ended with three laps of a highly technical 7.9km finishing circuit. A bunch sprint was expected but with the GC being very close, the fight for bonus seconds could come into play.
After 25km of racing, Dylan Page (Roth), Masakazu Ito (Aisan), Kim-Kun Soo (KSPO), Choon Huat Goh (Terengganu) and Edgar Nieto (7Eleven) escaped and as the peloton took a short breather, they pushed their advantage out to 45 seconds during the next 3km. However, the peloton was not ready to slow down yet and at the 35km mark it was all back together.
James Oram (ONE), Seo Joo Yong (KSPO) and Loh Sea Keong (Malaysia) launched the next serious attack but again the peloton reacted strongly, bring it back. However, Loh refused to give up and after 40km of racing, he attacked again. This time he had Seo Joo Yong (KSPO) and Chiu Ho San (HKSI) for company and now they were finally allowed some leeway.
At the end of a first hour during which 47.5km had been covered, the trio had an advantage of 1.55 and they worked well together, letting Seo lead Chiu and Loh across the line in the second intermediate sprint. Astana had taken control of the peloton and Dias Omirzakov was first from the peloton 4.50 later.
The gap went out to 5.20 before Astana stabilized the situation and as Drapac and Dimension Data also came to the fore, they had brought it down to 5 minutes at the 60km mark. Sixteen kilometres later it was already down to 3.20.
Unfortunately a crash forced local hero Ahmad Fauzan (Malaysia) to end his final Tour de Langkawi prematurely but that didn’t stop Drapac from upping the speed. 38km from the finish, they had narrowed the gap to just 2.55 and at the end of the first two hours during which 88.5km had been covered, it was 2.05. Moments later they hit the finishing circuit where it all came down to another bunch sprint.
Tour de Langkawi 2016 – stage 8 results (Batu Pahat – Melaka):
| 1 | Andrea Guardini (Astana) | 2:42:55 |
| 2 | Jakub Mareczko (Southeast – Venezuela) |
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| 3 | Shiki Kuroeda (Aisan) |
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| 4 | Michael Kolar (Tinkoff) |
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| 5 | Andrea Palini (Skydive Dubai) |
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| 6 | John Murphy (UnitedHealthcare) |
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| 7 | Brenton Jones (Drapac) |
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| 8 | Paolo Simion (Bardiani CSF) |
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| 9 | Matthew Goss (ONE) | ,, |
| 10 | Marco Benfatto (Androni-Sidermec) |
Final general classification:
| 1 | Reinardt Janse Van Rensburg (Dimension Data) |
28:31:21 |
| 2 | Daniel Jaramillo (UnitedHealthcare) |
+18” |
| 3 | Miguel Ángel López (Astana) |
+19” |
| 4 | Francisco Mancebo (Skydive Dubai) |
+23” |
| 5 | Jesper Hansen (Tinkoff) |
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| 6 | George Harper (ONE) |
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| 7 | Ivan Santaromita (Skydive Dubai) |
+25” |
| 8 | Lachlan Norris (Drapac) |
+29” |
| 9 | Luca Chirico (Bardiani CSF) |
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| 10 | Antonio Piedra (Funvic Carrefour) | ,, |
