BUTTERWORTH, April 29 (Bernama) -- South African rider Lange Malcom powered his way to win the third stage of 2010 Jelajah Malaysia (JM2010) from Taiping to Auto City Juru, near here, Thursday.
Malcom, 36, of Team Medscheme clocked two hours, 59 minutes and two seconds to edge his team-mate Arran Brown who also clocked an identical time at the finishing line.
In third position was Malaysia's Mohd Zamri Salleh of the Armed Forces team, who was given the same time.
"The teamwork was really good today especially in this shorter stage compared with yesterday's race. However, the deciding stage will be this Saturday and it will be another long distance race.
"It was a good finish although it was not an easy one. To have two riders of the team in front was excellent," said Malcom.
Malcom said after yesterday's race, the team knew it would be difficult to win the yellow jersey and so concentrated on the race to win the stage.
"We did it again today which is fabulous. I really love coming to Malaysia where the first time I came here was back in 1997 with the South African national team for Le Tour de Langkawi. So far, it has been a great experience," Malcom added.
Malcom, 36, of Team Medscheme clocked two hours, 59 minutes and two seconds to edge his team-mate Arran Brown who also clocked an identical time at the finishing line.
In third position was Malaysia's Mohd Zamri Salleh of the Armed Forces team, who was given the same time.
"The teamwork was really good today especially in this shorter stage compared with yesterday's race. However, the deciding stage will be this Saturday and it will be another long distance race.
"It was a good finish although it was not an easy one. To have two riders of the team in front was excellent," said Malcom.
Malcom said after yesterday's race, the team knew it would be difficult to win the yellow jersey and so concentrated on the race to win the stage.
"We did it again today which is fabulous. I really love coming to Malaysia where the first time I came here was back in 1997 with the South African national team for Le Tour de Langkawi. So far, it has been a great experience," Malcom added.
Besides winning the stage, Malcom also picked up the green jersey as leader of the overall individual points classification after accumulating 32 points although Armed Forces' Mohd Zamri Salleh and Malaysian national team's Amir Mustafa Rusli have identical points.
As in the previous stages, Giant Asia Racing Team and the Aisan Racing team were controlling the pace and rhythm of the main group to make sure that race leader David McCann retained the yellow jersey.
"The race was short and we controlled the race well. The break away did not really bothered us as we knew that it was going to be a bunch finish today," said McCann.
Indonesia's Matnur of the Polygon Sweet Nice team also retained the red jersey for king of the mountain (KOM) with eight points - just a point ahead of Johann Rabie (Team Medscheme), while Federal Territory's Suhardi Hasan is third with four points.
"I was not worried even though I did not win the KOM today. There are still some stages to go yet and I should be able to win some points," said Matnur.
National cyclist Amir Mustafa Rusli is comfortable in the white jersey of the individual Asean classification and also the blue jersey for the individual Malaysian classification.
Malaysia's continental team, Le Tua Racing Team continues to dominate the team classification.
They currently lead the overall team classification, Asean team classification and Malaysian team classification after accumulating 36 hours 37 minutes 40 seconds after three stages.
The fourth stage with a distance of 93.1km from Auto City, Juru to Sungai Petani, Kedah does not have any KOM zone but there will be one sprint zone at Padang Serai.
-- BERNAMA
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