Theo Bos scored a hat-trick for himself today, after winning stage 8 of this year’s Tour of Langkawi, in a sprint finish – following 202.2 kilometers of racing from Kuantan to Marang.
Bos beat Astana Pro Team’s Andrea Guardini to the finish line with Androni-Venezuela’s Kenny van Hummel taking third place after the lead sprinters managed to avoid a large crash involving numerous riders 1.5 kilometers from the finish.
"It’s a good feeling to have won my third stage this year to equal our record of three wins last year. That was our target," said Bos, who also won Stage 2 and Stage 7 to bring his personal tally of LTdL stage wins to five.
Today’s win also marked Belkin’s sixth ever in LTdL, with Bos delivering all but one of those victories.
"I was lucky I was able to stay on my bike although I was touched by some riders when the crash happened, but I was able to stay on my bike. I had a good lead-out from Greame Brown and again was in a good position to sprint for the win.
"We have two more stages which are flat and we have the opportunity to look for more wins, so we will see how it goes."
Today’s crash involved race leader Mirsamad Pourseyedigolakhour of Tabriz Petrochemical. However, the Iranian rider’s overall lead was unaffected, as the crash took place inside the final 3 kilometers, and, therefore all riders were afforded the same finish time as the peloton.
Pourseyedigolakhour has two more days to go – to emerge the first ever Asian winner of the Tour of Langkawi title.
Meanwhile, Synergy-Baku’s Matt Brammeier is likely to seal up the mountains classification jersey, should the Irish rider mange to hold onto his position after tomorrow’s stage.
Brammeier has 34 points, leading United Healthcare’s ISaac Bolivar by just three points, with Pourseyedigolakhour nine points adrift, as the mountains classification battle closes out tomorrow.
In the meantime, Aidis Kroupis of the Orica-GreenEDGE team remains in the lead of the points classification jersey, just two points ahead of Michael Kolar of Tinkoff-Saxo and nine points ahead of Bos.
Stage 8 Results
NED 1 BOS, Theo (BELKIN) 5:10 ITA 2 GUARDINI, Andrea (ASTANA) NED 3 VAN HUMMEL, Kenny Robert (ANDRONI GIOCATTOLI) SVK 4 KOLÁR, Michal (TINKOFF-SAXO) GER 5 FÖRSTER, Robert (UNITEDHEALTHCARE) LTU 6 KRUOPIS, Aidis (ORICA GreenEDGE) GER 7 KLEMME, Daniel (SYNERGY BAKU) FRA 8 MARTINEZ, Yannick (EUROPCAR) ITA 9 CHICCHI, Francesco (YELLOW FLUO) ITA 10 BERTAZZO, Omar (ANDRONI GIOCATTOLI)
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