The Tour de Langkawi is an annual cycling race which is held in Malaysia since 1996. The name of the event comes from the starting point of the first few editions, in Langkawi,Kedah, although some later editions did not include Langkawi in the race at all. The race is part of the UCI Asia Tour.
Four jerseys are contested during the race, although in history the jersey colours changed all the time to suit the sponsor, they are general classification, points classification; King of the Mountains and Asian riders classification. In addition, there are two team titles to honour teams classification and also Asian teams classification.
The tour is the biggest cycling event in Asia, and it is the only one in Asia to have granted two hors-category (2.HC)
The race was formed based by the idea of former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir bin Mohamad, along with the Late Wan Adli Wan Ibrahim and Izmee Che Ismail of First Cartel, the race was successfully held for the first time in 1996. For the first few years, the tour always started from Langkawi, however it is not lately. The tour also visited in Sabah and Sarawak in 1997, however poor cargo service, led to a long delays by several teams to getting the stuff and riders, force organisers to cancel second stage of the tour.Since then, the race never visited there again.
Several incidents spiced up the race in history, stages of the race were cancelled twice due to heavy downpour in the final stage back in 2003 and 2006.During the first stage in 2004, police officials mistakenly opening the way for public vehicles onto the race track while the race was still ongoing to decide the winner of the first stage. After negotiations between the riders, they decided to neutralise the stage.
Throughout the history, only Paolo Lanfranchi able to emerge twice as overall winner. That was two stages that never missing from the calendar since 1998. Genting Highlands is the toughest climb in the tour, except in 2008, it was replaced by Fraser's Hill due to security reasons and set to comeback again in 2009. The tour ended with twelve laps criterium race in Dataran Merdeka.
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