Stage 2 - Tanjung Malim - Sitiawan , 164.7km

Panaria again on a roll
By Anthony Tan in Sitiawan

Depicting a scene that bore an uncanny resemblance to the domination shown by the team at last year's race, where they won seven out of ten stages on offer, apprentice Maximiliano Richeze lead out his sprint maestro Ruben Bongiorno to give Ceramica Panaria-Navigare its second successive victory in as many days.

Regardless of the rider, the orange armada return to Malaysia each year equipped with at least one star sprinter. This year is no different, and while equalling last year's performances is no mean feat, Panaria appear to be well on their way to doing just that in 2006.

Despite the apparent ease with which victory was achieved, Bongiorno told Cyclingnews the day was in fact more difficult than initially envisaged by the team. "The first 30 kilometres were hard, always up and down, up and down. After that, the race got quite easy, and the most difficult part was the last 10 kilometres," he explained.

"It was quite dangerous with everybody trying to push to the front [in the finale], and it became a question of trying to avoid any crashes. We were going very, very fast and there were a number of riders who could of won this sprint; thanks to my team, I had a very good lead-out and went a little early from around 250 metres, but managed to hold everyone off, so I'm really happy."

Not so happy were at the half-dozen riders who found themselves on the ground when Panaria lead-out man Mirko Allegrini peeled off towards the barriers with around 200 to go, and as a consequence, Erki Pütsep (AG2R-Prevoyance), Angel Vallejo (Relax-Gam), Chris Newton (Recycling.co.uk), Yevgeniy Yakolev (Equipe Asia) and Allegrini himself all came crashing down. British rider Newton looked worst off, with his Commonwealth Games preparation now in doubt.

The day's racing once again featured an early move that predictably included breakaway specialist (or masochist) Koji Fukushima (Japan) and Albert Primero (Casino Filipino), but after the opening day's events that saw the Le Tour de Langkawi turn on its head, there were plenty of teams unwilling to give into their gains of yesterday.

Consequently, there were no real significant moves on the leaderboard with the stage ending in a bunch gallop. But up-and-coming German sprinter Steffen Radochla (Wiesenhof Akud), after placing fourth in each of the intermediate primes on the road to Sitiawan and third in the final sprint, now lies second on the overall classification, just six seconds behind the yellow jersey of Richeze.

1 Ruben Bongiorno (Arg) Ceramica Panaria-Navigare 3.59.24 (41.28 km/h)
2 Maximiliano Richeze (Arg) Ceramica Panaria-Navigare
3 Steffen Radochla (Ger) Wiesenhof Akud
4 Mark Cavendish (GBr) Great Britain
5 Filip Meirhaeghe (Bel) Landbouwkrediet-Colnago
6 Samuele Marzoli (Ita) LPR
7 Gregory Habeaux (Bel) Landbouwkrediet-Colnago
8 Anthony Ravard (Fra) Bouygues Telecom
9 Takashi Miyazawa (Jpn) Japan
10 Gabriele Missaglia (Ita) Selle Italia Diquigiovanni