Tour de Langkawi: Caleb Ewan takes stage and overall lead

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After the frustration of two second-place finishes in two days, Caleb Ewan (Orica-GreenEdge) finally managed to raise his arms on the line at the end of the third stage of the Tour de Langkawi, taking the leader’s yellow jersey in the process.

The 20-year-old Australian used the two categorised climbs in the first half of the 170km route from Gerik to Tanah Merah to dispose of the man who had bettered him on the two previous stages – Andrea Guardini (Astana) – before outgunning Youcef Reguigui (MTN-Qhubeka) and Leonardo Duque (Colombia) in the finishing straight.

Ewan now takes the lead in both the general and points classifications from Guardini, who finished 24 minutes down.

“After two seconds [places] it’s a bit of a relief to win today,” said Ewan. “The team worked so well and the least I could do was win today because of how they’ve been riding the last two days.

“Every day my legs are feeling better. Obviously he [Guardini] has been beating me the past days but I feel like I’m getting faster so hopefully I can beat him at the end tomorrow and in the other sprint stages too.”

After being beaten by the Italian coming off his wheel on day one, and with the same outcome occurring when he went from behind himself on day two, the third stage required a rethink. The spectacular route through the jungles in the north of Peninsular Malaysia provided the perfect apparatus – a category 2 climb after 20 kilometres and a category 1 after 50 kilometres.

“I saw him [Guardini] at the start up the first climb and he really looked to be suffering so that’s where we made the plan that if we really put the hammer down on the second climb that we might drop the pure sprinters so that’s what we did.”

With Guardini and other sprint rivals out of the way, Orica set about reeling in the day’s five-man breakaway, which had built a lead of over three minutes, before setting up their young leader.

“We didn’t want to bring the break back too quickly otherwise that would mean counter attacks so we timed it so we caught them in the last 10km,” explained Ewan. “In the end there were still all the counter attacks and that made it pretty stressful and keeping the race together was pretty hard but luckily the guys were strong enough to keep it together.”

Wednesday’s stage is a largely flat 165km heading south down the east coast and Ewan is looking to add to his tally. “I’m really confident with the team we have to control the race tomorrow. We might need a bit of help from Astana, because they want to go for the sprint as well, so I’m sure there are teams that will help us too if everyone wants a sprint.”

How it unfolded

Shortly ahead of the first climb five riders went clear: Natnael Berhane (MTN-Qhubeka), Kiel Reijnen (UnitedHealthCare), Frederic Brun (Bretagne-Seche Environnement), Francisco Mancebo, and Soufiane Haddi (both Skydive Dubai).

Reijnen, leader of the king of the mountains classification, was first over both climbs, all but securing the red jersey for the remainder of the race.

As the main bunch hit the gradients it began to splinter and by the summit, the break had a lead of 3:20 over the first pack, containing Ewan, with Guardini’s group a further three minutes back. As Ewan’s group drew back the break, the Italian took it easy to the finish.

Things up ahead came back together just inside the final 10 kilometres and Team Sky, who had announced their intentions to race aggressively before the stage, hit the front. Daniel Teklehaimanot (MTN-Qhubeka) put in an attack before Pavel Brutt (Tinkoff-Saxo) did the same and made it stick. He led into the last 3 kilometres with 13 seconds in hand but the game was soon up as Orica hit the front, with Ewan launching himself and holding it to the line.

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