Team Colombia-Coldeportes closed the 20th Tour de Langkawi giving battle until the end. In the last stage of the Malaysian race (Bharu – Kuala Lumpur 96,1 Km), experienced Leonardo Duque attacked along with 4 other athletes after 30km. However, the peloton caught the escapees with 3km to go, and Italian Andrea Guardini (Astana) took the fourth success of this edition beating in the mass sprint Aussie Caleb Ewan (Orica-GreenEDGE) and Slovak Michael Kolar (Tinkoff-Saxo).

No fears for leader’s jersey holder, Algerian Youcef Reguigui (MTN-Qhubeka), who secured the overall success ahead of Astana’s Valerio Agnoli (+0.09) and Team Sky’s Sebastian Henao (+0.10), whilst Colombia-Coldeportes’ Rodolfo Torres finished eighth, 0.16 behind the winner.

After the first 30km, characterized by battle in the peloton and high speed, a 5-man break went on the attack: Duque, Pires (Tinkoff-Saxo), Clarke (United Healthcare), Saleh (Terengganu) and Chtioui (Skydive Dubai). The peloton, led by sprinters’ teams MTN, Orica and Astana, didn’t leave any chance, closing down on the breakaway group in the last kilometres, giving room to the sprint won by Guardini. Sebastian Molano, 19th, was the first Colombia-Coldeportes rider to the line, whilst his teammate Darwin Pantoja did not take part at the last stage due to an intestinal virus.

Even if a stage win did not come, Sports Director Valerio Tebaldi could not complain with Escarabajos’ performance. “We do not have anything to regret, we did everything we could to take the stage win. Molano was the surprise of this week, while Torres had a good condition but the route change really did not go our way. We return from Malaysia with confidence of having a strong team, that could manage to grab some solid results soon.”

The Escarabajos completed their Malaysian experience with five top-10 placements, including the third place claimed by Duque in stage 3 and Molano’s fourth place in stage 6, whilst yesterday, Torres placed eighth in the queen-stage, the same spot he secured in the overall classification.