Matt Stephens

Matt Stephens of the Linda McCartney Pro Cycling Team produced the finest mountain ride by an English rider for many, many years when he took an emotional second place at Genting Highlands today. He capped a team performance to be very proud of in the decisive 10th stage of the Tour of Langkawi.

Approaching the brutally steep slopes that the 22kms of road needed to climb, the entire Linda McCartney team moved to the front of the peloton, putting some pain on the faces of the Mercury team. Mercury had driven the race along the road from Kuala Lumpur in the morning, and now they knew they had their work cut out. On the early part of the climb, the heat was almost unbearable, and the group yearned for the cooler air waiting at the summit.

Spencer Smith paced the peloton over the first 10km of the climb, proving that he has adapted brilliantly to international bike racing. The first man to attack was the alumni of Colombian climbing, Chepe Gonzalez, and Matt decided that this was the moment to launch his own stinging attack.

"I caught him pretty quickly and he wasn't really going fast enough, so I pressed on by myself," said Matt afterwards. He built a gap of around two-and-a-half minutes over the fractured peloton as Beneteau of Bonjour and the Mexican Perez of Italian team Panaria tried with all their might to get across the gap to him.

"I could see Matt only 100 metres in front, but he was going too well for me to catch him," explained the French rider. When the gradient eased for a few moments, Matt lifted his chain on to the big ring and leaned on the gear, carrying himself away from Beneteau and leaving Perez as his only serious challenger. By now, the peloton had been split to smithereens and the field were reduced to ones and twos in their efforts to get up the slopes.

"Those last few bends are steeper than anything I've seen in the Alps or Pyrenees," remarked "The voice of cycling" Phil Liggett, as he willed Matt up the last few kilometres. "Perez is one of the best climbers in Italy, I hope Matt can hold him off." As they came up to the final kilometre and the bends became too steep for many of the supporting motorbikes and cars, Perez came up alongside the exhausted Englishman. One final effort was enough to carry the Mexican clear and he broke the finish line first, Matt virtually collapsing at the summit a few seconds later.

"I'm sorry," was all he could say, as the emotion of the moment became too much for him. He had given everything he had to give, and had come within a kilometre of the greatest win of his career. This is surely the best performance yet seen in a Linda McCartney jersey, but right behind him were several more men with points to prove. An incredible ride by the huge Norwegian Bjornar Vestol took him to 16th place on the stage, with Ciaran Power also riding out of his skin to better his fine performance of yesterday. Ciaran was 23rd over the line.

Dragging himself up to the top of the hardest mountain he has seen in his new cycling career was Spencer Smith, the former World Triathlon Champion proving a vital ally to his more experienced team-mates. Spencer's wonderful 28th meant that all four of them had finished in the top 30, by far the best team on the day.

Tonight the team occupy 4th (Matt), 13th (Bjornar) and 23rd (Ciaran), and have risen to 3rd in the team classification. At one stage, Matt was leader on the road, but a gritty fightback by Chris Horner leaves the American in yellow by just 27 seconds.

Report by John Deering