Tour de Langkawi: McCabe wins stage 3 in Putrajaya

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Travis McCabe (Floyd’s Pro Cycling) claimed the double prize of victory and the yellow jersey on stage 3 of the Tour de Langkawi. The Floyd’s team anticipated the final corner onto the finishing straight to force a split in the peloton, the "beautiful lead out” ensuring a commanding victory for McCabe two seconds ahead of Matteo Pelucchi (Androni) and Andrea Guardini (Bardiani-CSF).

The win and bonus seconds also secured the yellow jersey for McCabe, with overnight leader Marcus Culey (Sapura) caught out by the sprint move and dropping to second at four seconds.

“We gapped the field, we saw we had a gap and I just told the boys to go,” McCabe told Cyclingnews of the finale. “One and half K, it was one minute long so it was go with everything we had. We just got the gap and kept opening it.”

The 29-year-old also won the stage into Putrajaya when the Tour de Langkawi visited in 2017 and is now two from two in Malaysia's federal administrative centre. With the full team effort in securing the win, McCabe said the victory instantly felt one of his best of nine professional victories.

“Oh yeah, it was awesome. It was so close two days ago, but to finally get it today with the team effort, just the Floyd’s boys killing it, is the best way to win,” said McCabe, who was second on stage 1. “It’s the best way to win a sprint and to drop the entire field while doing it.”

Despite taking yellow, a first in his career, McCabe explained team tactics for tomorrow's queen stage, with Floyd’s aiming to set up Keegan Swirbul for victory, is unlikely to change.

“We will take more responsibility. We are a small team and we have some firepower and we are coming in for the GC as well,” he said. “There is more responsibility on guys like me, Jonny [Clarke] and Émile [Jean] to ride the front until the climb and just let Keegan do his thing.”

Stage 4 of the race will start in Shah Alam, passing the Batu Caves en route to the summit finish at Genting Highlands, absent from the race since 2014, after 114.2 km of racing.

How it unfolded

The southernmost stage start of the Tour de Langkawi in 2019 saw the peloton assemble at Muar’s Stadium Sultan Ibrahim in sweltering conditions. Once the flag was dropped, the trio of Hang Shi (Giant Cycling), Sofian Nabil (Malaysia) and Soon Young Kwon (KSPO) immediately jumped and were given clearance by the Sapura-led peloton.

The three leaders pulled out a five-minute lead by the 20km mark, gradually taking more time on the bunch content to let them ride. The gap quickly ballooning out to 10 minutes.

On the road, Nabil moved into the virtual lead of the race having started the day 18 seconds down on the yellow jersey of Culey. By the halfway point of the stage, the breakaway’s lead dipped under nine minutes and then continued to fall as the peloton continued north to Putrajaya and the sprint teams started to work.

Inside the final third of the stage, the gap between peloton and breakaway further diminished with the sprint teams eager to set up a bunch gallop finale. With 40 km to race, Nabil was the first casualty of the breakaway leaving Kwon and Shi as the leaders on the road.

Bardiani-CSF took up the reins in the bunch, holding the two leaders at one minute with 20 km to race. The catch of the break coming inside 10 km to race as the sprint teams amassed at the head of the bunch. In the sprint to the line, McCabe made amends for stage 1 as he surged to his third career stage win in Langkawi.

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