Stage 5 untill 9 Tour de Langkawi

It's been a couple of days since my last update from the Tour de Langkawi.

During this time we have been confronted with two mountain stages whereby I rode fully in service of the team. The first mountain stage (where teammate Bonnin came 4th) I went full blast on the descent of the 1st category climb with the team's two climbers (Bonnin and Doi) following me, in doing so I thinned out the group. In general climbers are not good descenders, especially not in rain so we were able to start the final climb of the day with a bit of an advantage. For me it was good training and after wards I just finished the stage.

After that we had a few fairly flat days (with an unbelievable amount of rain each day). First we rode to set up the sprint for Marcel Kittel and Kenny van Hummel. Once Marcel had a flat tyre with two kilometres to do and otherwise we got a few top 5 places with our sprinters.

The last two days we have changed our tactic with the plan to get either myself or Albert Timmer in a breakaway as we expected a breakaway to get to the finish in at least one of the stages.

Yesterday in terms of weather was the worst day of the Tour de Langkawi so far with monsoon like rain the whole day making the quite flooded or with really deep puddles. It was a good chance for a breakaway giving that the race would be harder to control for a sprint with such bad weather. After several attacks,  I managed to make it into the right group which got away. We got away with about 25km to go and at the start we rode well together in an eight man group. Unfortunately the cooperation went away at about 5km to go and the peloton caught us with 800m to go. Shame.

Today the stage was shortened due to the bad weather and the dangerous roads I was mentioning.  The stage still ended up being 130km with the stage starting and finishing in the same place. Once again it took a long time before a leading group got away, at about 80km. The stage finished with an average speed of 48km/h, and that with a head wind illustrates how had it was for a good breakaway to get away. In the end I managed to be in the leading group that keep going full blast to the finish, in a group of 11 men.

In a leading group like that there are alot of different interests, we had one rider present who was high up enough in the general classification, lying 1:30 behind the leader as well as having two riders from teams that were battling it out for the team classification, all different interests that you have to take into account. I wasn't planning on leaving it to a sprint because we had at least two sprinters in the group that can win mass sprints so I didn't see much hope of winning from a sprint.  I wanted to place at least one brutal attack and put all my energy in such an attack. I decided to do so at 3km from the finish but the kilometre signs didn't make sense, with the 5km sign being followed by the 2km to go sign one kilometre later. At that time two guys got away and I was surprised that we were so close to the finish. The riders who were going for the team classification went to the front of the group to defend their leads so I waited a little bit. When I finally did attack because we weren't able to close the gap, a rider from Eurocar took to the front and closed the gap to me with the rest of the group in his wheel. I stopped my attack and he passed by with the whole group which let him ride to 2nd place. In the sprint I didn't have strength anymore after the attack and I was a disappointing 7th.

I was riding to win and for nothing else and I did every thing I could for it. I don't know exactly what I should have done differently to do it better as it's not so easy to read how a finale like that is unfolding. Afterwards I think that I shouldn't have waited so long but my tactic could have worked out. Every finale is different and hopefully it will work out the next time with a win.

The positive thing is that after nine stages I've been part of the right breakaway group three times. The first stage I felt really strong and we were only caught with 3km to go. Yesterday I was in the group that was caught 800m to the finish and today I was in the group that stayed away until the end.

The legs are good and the awareness is clearly all working well early in the season so I am fairly confident for the rest of the season, it will have to work out some time!

Greetings, Koen