TEAM Sapura Cycling Have Set the bar high for this year, looking to not only excel in the Asia Tour but also for their national riders to shine in the Vietnam Sea Games.
Sapura team principal Sayuti Zahit said the team's major goal is to help Malaysia win gold at the Vietnam Sea Games on May 12-23.
The continental team's riders enjoyed a strong outing at the national road championships in Melaka last week where Nur Aiman Rosli successfully defended his men's elite individual time trial title while Saari Amri Abd Rasim won the elite road race.
"Although the (Asia) tour is important for us, our main goal this year is to win gold at the Sea Games in May (through our riders)," said Sayuti.
"We are looking at winning in either the time trial through Aiman or the road race (through other riders). Hopefully we will be able to achieve our objective.
"We are also aiming to defend our yellow jersey at Le Tour de Langkawi (LTdL) and also recapture the year-end No 1 Asia Tour ranking.
"We hope that organisers in Asia resume their tours (Asia) so that we can reduce our costs and not have to travel so much to Europe for races."
Malaysia won two gold in men's road cycling at the 2015 Singapore Sea Games and one gold at the 2017 Kuala Lumpur Sea Games but finished empty-handed at the 2019 Philippines Sea Games as the hilly terrain used for the course then was not suitable for Malaysian riders.
Both Sapura and Terengganu Cycling Team (TSG) have a promising crop of youngsters coming up the ranks such as Aiman, Shaiful Adlan Shukri, Akmal Hakim Zakaria, Muhsin Al Redha Misbah (all Sapura), Nur Aiman Zariff, Irwandie Lakasek and Wan Abdul Rahman Hamdan (all TSG).
Sapura had ended the 2020 season as the top team in the Asia Tour rankings but lost that accolade to TSG last year. Sapura ended the 2021 season in ninth place overall as they had not raced much in Asia.