Tabriz Petrochemical Cycling Team

Terrific Taiji takes one for Aisan

Tabriz patrols peloton for Erler on another scorching day

Today was all about teams asserting themselves on the road to Parit Sulong - Tabriz Petrochemical for race leader Tobias Erler and Aisan Racing, for stage winner and Japanese national road race champion, Taiji Nishitani.

The 29-year-old from Hiroshima, Japan, made the most of the hard work done by his teammates to outkick double stage winner Michael Matthews (Jayco-Skins) and Vidal Celis (Footon-Servetto), with the former taking control of the sprint classification as a result of his fourth top-five placing.

But perhaps the biggest smiles were obviously on the faces of the Aisan Racing team members, who had spoken of working hard to get Nishitani the win; in doing so he became the sixth Asian and third Japanese rider to take a stage of the Tour de Langkawi, the most recent countryman being Shinichi Fukushima in 2007.

"I'm so happy. This race is very important and my teammates worked so hard for me," said Nishitani. "I have at least one win at this Tour de Langkawi and this is a very important race for the team. I'm really satisfied.

"This is our first race this year and my condition is not the best - until yesterday it was really difficult for me to finish with the sprint. But honestly, today when we started I felt a little bit heavy and it was a little bit difficult," he explained.

"Thanks to the hard work by the team, I could win today; also, the lay out of the finish suited my squad," continued Nishitani. "Our target was getting the stage win and we thought about a strategy to make a small breakaway in which I could ride. We thought the possibility of this was very low, which is why we decided to change our strategy to make the sprint finish. We tried it and pulled it off.

Shake and bake - Malaysian style

The day was punctuated by a two-man break and the ensuing battle for intermediate sprint points that went on behind between Anuar Manan and Matthews. Local boy Ali Fallanie (Malaysia National Team) and Silvere Ackermann (Vorarlberg-Corratec) spent almost 100km as an escape pairing before Fallanie felt the effects of his efforts and dropped back to the bunch after the sprint at Yong Peng.

And while Matthews and Manan were looking to gain the ascendancy in the battle for the green jersey, overall race leader Tobias Erler was trying his best to recover from his toils yesterday, which he admitted had hurt his legs.

Erler received something of a reprieve today however, using the support of his Tabriz Petrochemical teammates to maintain the race lead on another scorching day in the Malaysian sun.

"Acutally, today wasn't as hard as yesterday for me. Yesterday I made it too hard for myself," said Erler after the finish. "Thanks to my teammates for the work they did in the first 30km before the break went away, because I had really bad legs from yesterday; yesterday I did a lot of work for myself and today they had to help me as my legs weren't really good.

"When the break rode away, ISD and [Tabriz Petrochemical teammate] Andrey Mizurov and myself ensured that the break wouldn't get more than five minutes so the sprinting teams would start to chase at the end," he added.

And chase they did, with the likes of Footon-Servetto, Aisan Racing, Jayco-Skins and Vorarlberg-Corratec all endeavouring to get their man into position to win after a slightly technical final kilometre into the town of Parit Sulong.

Matthews explained that his second place almost didn't eventuate save for a piece of good luck - he stated in yesterday's post-race press conference that he's the man with the most luck amongst the sprinters, and that was certainly the case today.

"At the bridge [approximately 400m from the finish - ed.] I was actually 20th wheel so I wasn't actually going to go for the sprint at the end as I wasn't feeling too good coming into it - it was way too dodgy," said Matthews.

"There were people going everywhere and it wasn't really worth crashing for. I was just going to sit up and then I saw a free run to the front so I hit it from 20th wheel and got second. I was happy with that."

While the battle for the yellow jersey will most likely be decided on the Genting climb this Saturday, the battle for green looks set to light up tomorrow's stage as Matthews holds a three-point advantage over best Asian rider, Manan.

It's a realistic goal for the Australian and he built his efforts today on the knowledge he's in with a shot at green. "I kind of set myself up well as we went into the first sprint today but I got rolled in the second one and there was a breakaway for the third one, which meant one of my teammates had to outsprint the guy in the green jersey [Anuar] and got it so we were tied on points. I just had to try and beat this guy [Anuar] in the finish to get the green jersey," said Matthews.