Held on the tropical Indonesian island that gives the race its name, the iconic Tour de Bintan, one of the Southeast Asia’s premier amateur stage races, gained again some volume as the number of participants went up from 950 last year to 1200 this year.
There are two routes to qualifying: the opening 17km Individual Time Trial of the three-day festival of cycling on the Friday afternoon, and the epic 144km Gran Fondo Classic mass start road race on the Saturday morning.
Tour de Bintan is a very international event with teams coming from all South East Asian cycling countries plus ofcourse a large number of Australians, mainly from the Perth qualifier event that disappeared since last year on the calendar.
The race weekend ends with a non-qualifying 111 or 55km Granfondo on Sunday.
