A flat 158.9 km stage from Melaka to Batu Pahat that looked certain to end in a bunch sprint instead delivered a successful breakaway and another solid top-10 for us at Team Picnic PostNL.
We’re in another big hotel today. They’re all pretty big hotels actually. But you move to another hotel and think this may be a bit different now in the sense that I’ll get different and food and stuff, a bit of variety.
But we were having the discussion between riders wondering if they bring the same chef to all the hotels as part of the race. It was literally the same buffet every day.
Stage 7 of the 2026 Tour de Langkawi took us 158.9 kilometres from Melaka to Batu Pahat. On paper you would have said ninety-nine point nine percent sprint. No chance of a breakaway would stay away.
And then you see the names that went into the break and a lot actually climber type riders. There wasn’t really cohesion there between a XDS Astana Team and Modern Adventure Pro Cycling, which have been the two teams that have dominated the sprints over the last couple of days.
So that put a bit of a spanner in the works and no one wanted to chase. The break got a pretty big gap and when the chasing did start to happen it looked like it was going to come back really easy, but it didn’t.
And so the breakaway ended up staying away, which is a shame for us. We’ve changed roles in the team a little over the past couple of days and we gave Christiaan (VAN REES) the opportunity to sprint. He was third in the bunch gallop, seventh on the day because there was four lads up the road.
So a bit disappointed, but we’ve got our opportunity now tomorrow to try and get him onto the podium, which would be great. Ultimately that would be a good end to the week. We definitely think we have the capacity to do that. That’s the plan now for tomorrow.
By the way, keep an eye on Irish Cycling Hub Instagram Stories for a ‘LIVE’ takeover for Stage 8 and my trip back to France. Obviously it’ll be deferred with travel, time zones, wifi coverage and so on… but yeah tune in to Irish Cycling Hub Instagram Stories. Could be Tuesday 06th, Wednesday 07th, or Thursday 08th depending how I’m fixed.
It should be pretty relaxed on the plane. I’m going to stay on the same time zone when I get back to France for the two or three days, so that when I get back to China for 2026 Tour of Guangxi, Tuesday 13th to Sunday 18th October, I’m not jet-lagged. I hope. It’s hard to do that with travel. But hopefully it’ll stay much the same for me.
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