Stage 3 – Sungai Petani to Kuala Kangsar (189.7 km)
Stage 3 was another long, mostly flat day from Sungai Petani to Kuala Kangsar. Nearly 190 kilometres on those big Malaysian roads again. A proper sprint stage after the climb up Gunung Jerai yesterday.
These races are very straightforward, you know. We’re lucky in the sense that they’re pretty big, open roads, and not really that dangerous, which is good obviously.
The sprints are always pretty fast but they actually start up pretty late here, because you don’t have eight or nine WorldTour teams. It’s us and Astana and then a couple of ProContinental teams, which are obviously pretty strong as well.
So there’s no drag racing to speak of really. It all kind of starts at like 5 to 6, maybe 10 kms to go maximum, whereas I think in Pro or WorldTour races that can start at around the 40 km mark.
You really get to use your full team which is quite good. The climbers on the team all did a super job. Have a look back at the video from about 5 kms out all the way to the finish and you’ll see them working hard.
At the finish I was supposed to be leading out Roy (Hoogendoorn). We kind of lost each other inside the final corner at around 600 m to go I think, and I ended up finding myself on the wheel of (Matteo) Malucelli, the eventual winner, at 300 m to go.
I looked back for Roy (you’ll see me looking back in the video), hit a hole and the chain came off! So that was unfortunately my race done. But Roy did come up the right-hand side and ended up getting 12th or 13th I think.
Not exactly what we wanted but yeah, it was what we had to accept and walk away with on the day.
Classification Jerseys
Another small adjustment here is the classification jerseys. Takes a small bit of getting used to compared to the usual yellow, green and polka-dot back home.
The overall leader wears orange instead of yellow, the points/sprint jersey is blue rather than green, and there’s the usual polka-dot (light-blue rather than red) for the mountains, plus a white one for the best Asian rider.
After you’ve seen them a couple of times it’s easy enough to pick out who’s leading what and who to keep an eye on in the bunch.
The crowds and pageantry at the starts are pretty nuts too! They like creating a bit of atmosphere and stuff, it’s quite funny.
And of course the buffets in the hotels are kind of crazy too to be fair. Must get a few snaps of them for ye. I’ve been avoiding most of them for the majority of my time though!
