KUALA LUMPUR, Dec 10 (NNN-BERNAMA) — The 2010 Le Tour de Langkawi’s final stage in Kuala Lumpur (criterium race) will be shortened from seven to six rounds to ease traffic congestion, says the Chief Executive Officer of Asia’s biggest cycling event, Mohamed Salleh.
“We have reduced the number of rounds for the race in Kuala Lumpur so that traffic flow can resume sooner,” he told Bernama here Wednesday.
The organizer of the prestigious event, the only one in Asia granted two hors-category — from March 1 to 7, the Youth and Sports Ministry, would be inviting world class teams and riders to compete here, so that the level of competition would be high.
Mohamed said a number of initiatives would be taken to make the race more challenging right from the start, for example, the first stage would be from Kota Baharu to Kuala Berang in the northerastern part of Peninsular Malaysia, a distance of 174.5 km.
He added that although the overall budget for the race had been reduced from 10 million Ringgit (one USD = about 3.4 Ringgit) to 7.5 million Ringgit, it would not affect the quality of the tour.
“We will maintain the quality of the tour so that it can match the other renowned cycling tours in the world. In fact, our target is to make it the best tour,” he said. “As organizers, we hope corporate sponsors will come forward to do their part in making the tour a success.”
The 1,001.8-km event, to be held over seven stages, is scheduled to start in Kota Bharu in Kelantan and pass through the states of Terengganu, Pahang, Johor, Melaka, Negeri Sembilan, the Federal Capital Territory of Putrajaya, and Selangor before ending at Dataran Merdeka in Kuala Lumpur. — NNN-BERNAMA
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