No descent for overall leader Poole despite finishing 34th

BENTONG: Although he came in 34th out of 125 riders in Stage 4 of Le Tour de Langkawi (LTdL), British rider Max Poole retained his green jersey (overall leader).

Riding 131.2km from Kuala Kubu Baru to Bentong yesterday, the Team DSM-Firmenich PostNL rider crossed the finish line with a mass sprint time of 2’53:37, keeping him ahead of Thomas Presenti of JCL Team Ukyo who sits in second place in the overall leaderboard.

The 21-year-old Poole said the team’s tactics worked out in the end, giving teammate Casper Van Uden the opportunity to sprint ahead and take sixth place in the stage classification.

“In the end, we did give Van Uden the chance to sprint for the win, maybe not ideally how we wanted it to end,” said Poole, who has had five podium finishes this season so far, including winning Stage 3 in Cameron Highlands on Tuesday.

“As we came off the descent, the gap with the breakaway group was quite big, which was a challenge.’’

Stage 4 yesterday had only one Category 1 climb, and during the descent, Poole said the forest area brought about a challenge of radio interference.

“The gap was big and it was super hard to get anything through the team radio in the forest section, which was quite tricky.

“But overall, my teammates did well to pull out in front when we caught up and that gave Van Uden the chance to sprint to the finish line,” he said.

Hanging on to the green jersey, Poole said it doesn’t change the fact that there are still four stages to go, and anything can happen moving forward when the cavalcade tackles Stage 5 from Kuala Lumpur to Melaka today, covering a distance of 167.3km.

“It is nice to be the race leader, but to me, it’s just the same as normal.

“It doesn’t change anything for me although it is nice to be in the jersey,” he said.