Fast men of Astana poised to blaze Le Tour de Langkawi again

PETALING JAYA: Expect sprint specialists, Matteo Malucelli of Italy and Gleb Syritsa of Russia to hog the limelight again in the Le Tour de Langkawi (LTdL) starting on Sept 28.

With less than 50 days to go, top teams are loading their line-ups with some of the fastest men in the peloton and Kazakhstan’s WorldTeam outfit, XDS Astana, are standing tall with Malucelli and Syritsa.

LTdL chief operating officer Emir Abdul Jalal said the inclusion of Malucelli and Syritsa is part of Astana’s strategy to dominate the six flat stages, which favour sprinters in this year’s route.

“Based on this year’s route, there are six stages that we expect to end in bunch sprints, and teams with several sprint specialists will be eager to collect stage wins. With Malucelli and Syritsa on board, Astana appear to have a slight edge,” said Emir.

“It could also be part of their plan to counter other top sprinters such as Tudor Cycling’s Alberto Dainese and Team Picnic PostNL’s Fabio Jakobsen, both of whom have impressive credentials with stage victories in the Giro d’Italia and Vuelta a Espana.”

Malucelli and Syritsa are no strangers to the LTdl.

Malucelli is the reigning red jersey winner as the sprinters classification champion. He also bagged three stage wins last year in Stage 2 (Arau-Butterworth), Stage 7 (Miri-Bintulu) and Stage 8 (Bintulu).

Syritsa, on the other hand, clinched the opening stage in Kuah, Langkawi, and donned the overall leader’s green jersey for two stages.

Astana have also listed four other riders – Aaron Gate, Anton Kuzmin, Nicolas Vinokurov and Lev Gonov.

Gate, 35, from New Zealand, is a four-time gold medallist at the 2022 Birmingham Commonwealth Games and is expected to mount a strong challenge for the green jersey this year.