Race leader Caleb Ewan has retained his yellow jersey, finishing third in a bunch sprint on stage four of the Tour de Langkawi.

After a strong effort on the early climbs of yesterday’s stage and finishing off with his first international victory of 2015, the neo-pro didn’t have the legs to go with Andrea Guardini (Astana Pro Team) who won his third stage for the week.

“We had to use most of our troops to bring back the break, it was a really hard chase for the guys today,” sport director Matt Wilson said.

“We had only a couple of guys left in the finish and they found it hard to compete against the fresher teams and lost each other in the finish.

“Caleb wasn’t in a great position to start the sprint.”

After his fourth podium in a many days, following the first two stage second places and yesterday’s victory, Ewan told reporters he was still chasing more wins.

“He (Guardini) is proving really quick and really hard to beat but I think my time will come and I can beat him maybe,” Ewan said.

“You get a little more respect in the bunch and but aside from that it’s more responsibility for the team, which is a downside probably.

“The break really stuck it to us and we were going full gas from about 60km. That really burned a lot of our guys and we didn’t have many at the end which made it really hard. We got a bit swamped in the last kilometre and it got really messy behind their wheels because obviously everyone was trying to fight for Guardini’s wheel, and I couldn’t start my sprint until about 100m to go which is obviously too late when you’re racing against guys like him.”

After 30km of racing, five riders broke clear and were chased by two more to make a breakaway of seven.

With one ambition for the day in mind Pierre-Luc Périchon of Bretagne-Séché claimed the two intermediate sprints on offer and then sat up to leave the work out front in the hands of his six companions.

With his presence, the gap had extended to over five minutes, but shortly after his decision to wait for the peloton the gap began to fall.

ORICA-GreenEDGE, with sprinter Ewan in yellow in tow, took ownership of the chase along with Astana Pro Team in support of Guardini.

Androni Giocattoli and MTN-Qhubeka later joined them for the closing stages and with two kilometres remaining the stage was set up for the sprint.