Aggressive riding has earned Matt Brammeier the red jersey of King of the Mountains at the Tour of Langkawi.
By Gerard Cromwell
Ireland’s Matt Brammeier looks set to claim the King of the Mountains title at the Tour of Langkawi when the race ends tomorrow, the Synergy Baku rider having held onto his red jersey when the race tackled its final two climbs on today’s penultimate stage.
Brammeier went into today’s stage with just a three point lead over Colombian climber Isaac Bolivar of United Healthcare.
With two fourth category climbs ahead of him today, the Irish champion had two options to try and keep his jersey; either take Bolivar on in a head to head sprint on each climb, or his Synergy Baku squad could try and let a small group go clear early on in the hope they would take the points away from both riders so that the status quo would remain at the head of the classification.
Advertisement
In the end, it was the latter option that proved fruitful with four riders; Jason Christie (CCN), Carlos Quintero (Colombia), Jonathon Monsalves (Yellow Fluo) and Burr Ho from Hong Kong going clear after 15km.
Related News
Monsalves led this quartet over the first climb of the day at 25km and did the same on the second and final climb of this year’s Tour de Langkawi after 37km, ensuring Brammeier held onto the red jersey of mountains leader.
With the group gaining a minute and 47 seconds at one point, Quintero became race leader on the road briefly before the Tabriz Petrochemical team of race lead Mirsad Pourseyedigolakhour took up the chase at the head of the peloton.
Brammeier attacked out of the bunch in the final 20km in an effort to get across to Quintero and Monsalves but in the end, all were reeled in as dominant Dutchman Theo Bos sprinted to his fourth stage victory ahead of Andrea Guardini of Astana and Aidis Kruopis of Orica GreenEdge, who retained his led in the blue jersey points competition.
With no more mountains left to climb, Brammeier just has to stay upright and finish tomorrow’s final stage to be crowned King of the Mountains at this year’s Tour of Langkawi.
It’s been a great start to the season for Brammeier. The four time Irish road race champion is by no means a pure climber but much like sprinter Alessandro Petachi, who took the mountains title in 1999, he used some aggressive riding and clever tactics to mop up points in the early stages and then managed to hang onto the jersey in the final days of the 2.HC race.
Brammeier also wore the blue points leader’s jersey for a couple of days and narrowly missed out on the yellow of race leader on day one, when a bout of cramp saw him finish second, but barring incident, he will take now go home with the bragging rights that come with winning the red jersey of best climber in a race that includes the fearsome hors category ascent of Ghenting Highlands.
Topics
