Fraser's Hill will decide winner
NST, 16/2/2008

DRAPAC-Porsche's Mitchell Docker may wear the yellowjersey into the Fraser's Hill stage of Le Tour de Langkawi (LTdL) today, but it is all geared towards a battle of the top 19—the riders who had put a famous 23-minute deficit on the rest of the peloton in the surprise outcome on the opening day of the Tour last Saturday.

It will undoubtedly be from the climbers within this group of 19 from which the winner of the 13th edition of LTdL will be discovered.

And the favourites are South Africa's Ian McLeod, Serramenti Diquigiovanni's Jackson Rodriguez and Bouygues Telecom's Matthieu Sprick, who was yesterday dethroned from the overall lead by Docker.

Malaysia's hopes aren't there, but locals will be out to push Le Tua Cycling Team's Australian rider Bernard Sulzberger, who has done a good job of maintaining his position in the top 10 of the general classification until now.

The former Herald Sun Tour mountains classification winner is in joint fifth with Team Type 1's Australian rider Matt Wilson, with an eight-second deficit from Docker.

But history dictates that the Serramenti Diquigiovanni team will have most to say in today's stage, as the most successful team (previously known as the Colombia-Selle Italia team) in the history of the Tour, and team manager Gianni Savio has promised just that.

“Tomorrow (today) we will make a race. We have always prepared for Genting, but this time if it is Fraser's Hill, even ifwe don't knowif it will be a serious climb, we will be making the race with Jackson Rodriguez and Ruslan Ivanov,” said Savio.

Serramenti Diquigiovanni already have two stage wins to their credit this time around, one through sprinter Hondo and another through Colombian climber Jose Serpa in Stage six on Thursday. One more could be coming today.

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