After a couple of second places and frustrating near-misses, Mr Langkawi, Andrea Guardini (Astana), managed to extend his record of stage wins in the Tour de Langkawi when he took his second victory in this year's edition in today's final stage. The Italian held off Aidis Kruopis (Orica-GreenEDGE) in a close bunch sprint in Kuala Terengganu while Mirsamad Pourseyedigolakhour (Tabriz) finished safely to become the first ever Asian winner of the event.

Andrea Guardini had travelled to Malaysia for the Tour de Langkawi with the intention of dominating the bunch sprint as he had done it in 2011 and 2012 but the 2014 edition of the Malaysian race ended mostly as a frustrating experience for the rider who holds the record of stage wins in Asia' biggest bike race. Despite a win on stage 3, a big crash on stage 2 and several near-misses had left Guardini with very little to celebrate in Malaysia.

Today Guardini ended the race on a good note when he again won the race's final stage in Kuala Terengganu as he has done twice in the past. The Astana sprinter showed his intentions right from the start when he asked his team to chase down a two-rider breakaway almost from the gun and his determination paid off when it all again came down to the expected bunch sprint.

However, it was a close fight as Aidis Kruopis was a fierce rival for the fast Italian and the Lithuanian narrowly missed out on his first win of the season. Instead, he had to settle for his third second place of the race while Francesco Chicchi (YellowFluo) took third.

Kruopis got the consolation prize of the win in the points competition as his nearest rival Michael Kolar (Tinkoff-Saxo) had the rare experience of missing the top 10. Matthew Brammeier (Synergy Baku) got his reward for an aggressive race when he won the mountains jersey and all he had to do today was to finish the race within the time limit.

The biggest winner of them all, however, was Mirsamad Pourseyedigolakhour who used his stunning performance in last Sunday's queen stage to become the first Asian winner of the race. He finished 8 seconds ahead of Merhawi Kudus (MTN-Qhubeka) while Isaac Bolivar (UnitedHealthCare) rounded out a podium that consisted of riders from three different continents but not a single European or North American. Pourseyedigolakhour also took the white jersey as best Asian rider in the event.

Many of the WorldTour riders will now travel back to Europe to continue their racing in the traditional cycling heartland but the Asian calendar continues with another big event when the 2.1 Tour de Taiwan kicks off tomorrow.

A flat final stage

As usual, the Tour de Langkawi ended with a short flat stage that finished in Kuala Terengganu. From the start in Tasik Kenyir, the riders travelled along flat roads for 103.1km and the race ended with 5 laps of a 6.3km finishing circuit. There was not a single categorized climb on the route, meaning that it was all likely to come down to a bunch sprint.

With the stage being the final chance for the riders to get some publicity, the start of the stage was very animated as several riders tried to get clear. Already from the gun, the pace was fierce and it took some time for the day's break to be established as attacks were launched in both sides of the roads.

The break is formed

After 13km, it was still all together but shortly after that point, Antoine Duchesne (Europcar) launched the right move. He was quickly joined by Brett Lancaster (Orica-GreenEDGE) and Jonathan Monsalve (YellowFluo) to form a strong front trio.

The gap quickly went up to 1.10 but Lancaster quickly realized that he could use his energy a lot better. As the final lead-out man for Kruopis, he decided to save what he had for the final sprint and fell back to the peloton.

The gap is stable

At the 30km mark, the gap was still 1.10 as Pourseyedigolakhour's Tabriz team and Guardini's Astana had decided to keep the front duo under form control. For a long time, the gap stayed just above the 1-minute mark and the escapees had little reason to dream about staying away.

At the 47km mark, Duchesne beat Monsalve in the first intermediate sprint while Michael Schweizer (Synergy Baku) was the fastest in the peloton. Ghader Mizbani (Tabriz) rolled across the line in 4th as part of his chase work, meaning that Kruopis and Kolar were both saving their energy for the final sprint.

Belkin join the chasers

Tabriz and Astana allowed the gap to come up to 1.45 but when Belkin joined the chase work, the advantage again went down. At the first passage of the line with a little more than 30km to go, it was down to 1.05 and as Astana accelerated further, it was quickly down to less than a minute.

At the second passage, it was only 28 seconds as Monsalve led Duchesne across the line to win the second intermediate sprint while the Tabriz dup of Mizbani and Behnam Khalililkhosroshahi took 3rd and 4th by just doing their chase work.

Asadov tries to bridge across

The gap stayed at around 30 seconds for some time and just before the third sprint which came with two laps to go, Elchin Asadov (Synergy Baku) tried to bridge across. That was enough to take third in the sprint behind Monsalve and Duchesne while Rick Flens led the peloton across the line as he did the hard work for Belkin.

As the riders passed the line to start the final lap, all escapees had been reeled in and it was now clear that the stage would be decided in a bunch sprint. All the big sprint teams jostled for positions one final time but today there was no success for Belkin and Theo Bos.

Instead, it was Guardini who took his second win of the race to extend his record while the day ended as a big one for Pourseyedigolakhour who sealed his overall win.