Sweet debut for Diquigiovanni's Gavazzi
10/02/2009, NST Online

MATTIA Gavazzi marked the best of debuts when he won a bunch sprint to make it two out of two opening stage victories in his early season campaign when he pipped Australian Chris Sutton to bag Stage One of Le Tour de Langkawi (LTdL) from Putrajaya to Senawang yesterday.

The 133.8km stage was coloured by a sprinkling of attacks at the start and near the finish sandwiching the most effective escape of the day that saw three men -- MNCF Continental team's Akmal Amrun, South Africa's Jaco Venter and Kazakhstan's Dmitry Gruzdev -- go on their own for 75 kilometres, sweeping between themselves all three intermediate sprint time bonuses and mountains points on offer.

Italian Gavazzi, who also won the opening stage of the Tour de San Luis in Argentina three weeks ago, counted on his Diquigiovanni-Androni Gioccatoli team to pull back the three escapees, hard work that began prior to the only categorised climb on offer yesterday at the 73.6km point in Bukit Puyoh and ended 106km into the stage.

A multiple series of hopeful last ditch attacks were launched in the final 30km, but the Diquigiovanni team held solid at the front of the pack to pull everything back together for a bunch sprint with US outfit Garmin-Slipstream lining up Sutton as well.

The final 100 metres saw a flat, four-pronged frontline leading the peloton to the finish line with South Africa having placed Nolan Hoffman in the running, while record stage winners CSF-Navigare had put Tiziano Dall'Antonia in the picture.

The 24-year-old Gavazzi, however, proved too strong on the day, pulling ahead to confirm his team's status as hot favourites for all but the Asian titles in this edition of LTdL.

Gavazzi pulled on the Proton yellow jersey as the overall leader and also emerged the early leader in the points classification for the Milo green jersey, the one that he could hold on to till the final stage in Kuala Lumpur on Sunday.

"The stage was a really good one for me and my team did all the work to make it a bunch sprint," said Gavazzi, who only started the first two races of the season as a replacement for the injured Alberto Loddo.

For the rider, who was banned 14 months by the Italian cycling federation after testing positive for cocaine in 2004, it was also a matter of celebrating a grand debut with Diquigiovanni, who are the biggest team he has represented thus far.

"We will try to win as much as we can in this race, but we cannot be controlling the race everyday like we did today (yesterday). The team will be quieter because we have won already," said Gavazzi.

Stage Two, from Senawang to Malacca today, covers 160.9km and starts off with a tricky category three climb up Bukit Inas, 24.2 km into the stage, with three intermediate sprints before the race moves into the flats.

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