KUALA LUMPUR: Terengganu Polygon Cycling Team (TSG) emerged from a gruelling fifth stage at Petronas Le Tour de Langkawi (LTdL) today with their riders in charge of two out of the four jerseys on offer.
Jambaljamts Sainbayar, who lost the white jersey (Asian classification) to Astana's Andrey Zeits during the third stage, is now back in the lead, albeit with a slim one-second advantage over the latter.
Jambaljamts had placed second in the intermediate sprint in Lenggong and was also first over the summit in Sumpitan (category-two climb).
The Mongolian admitted that it was the toughest day of racing so far at this year's LTdL.
Riders covered 172.0km, the second longest stage this year, starting in Kuala Kangsar and ending in Kulim town today.
"My goal was to fight for the intermediate sprints (for bonus seconds), but it was so hard to get in the breakaway today," said the 26-year-old.
"I managed to place second in the first intermediate sprint (Lenggong) and also got the mountain points. My teammate, Nur Aiman Zariff, was very aggressive early on and (subsequently due to fatigue) was not able to follow (the front group) on the climb.
"It is important that we still have the red jersey and now also the white jersey.
"Tomorrow is going to be a flat stage, so it will probably come down to stage seven. I will give it my best."
Nur Aiman and Jambaljamts are now level on 29 points atop the climbers' classification, but Nur Aiman will still wear red tomorrow as he has reached more category-two climbs first than Jambaljamts.
TSG sporting director Danny Feng said they did not want to risk losing the red jersey to another team.
"The category-two climb was actually much harder than it is depicted in the race manual," said Feng.
"The big teams went really hard today and did not want to let anybody go.
"Unfortunately, Nur Aiman and Harrif Saleh got dropped, so Jambaljamts had no choice but to go for the climbers' points as we did not want to lose the red jersey.
"Tomorrow should finish in a bunch sprint and, hopefully, Harrif can fight for a good position."
The sixth stage tomorrow, which features intermediate sprints at Penang Bridge, Bagan and Sungai Petani, will start in George Town and end in Alor Star (120.8km).