The long, hard third stage of the Tour de Langkawi in 38C in Malaysia yesterday almost proved disastrous for the Irish team: three of them were eliminated when they finished outside the time limit, and the others came in over 23 minutes behind the leaders. Andy Roche is now best overall, in 77th place, 25 minutes in arrears.

However, an appeal by manager Declan Byrne proved successful and the three were reinstated.

Micheal Fitzgerald was left trailing on the first of two early climbs, and, on the second one, Morgan Fox and Leslie McKay were dropped.