“Most important for us now is scoring the rating points to qualify for the Olympic Games,” explained Bakhodir Muminov, head coach of Uzbekistan national team. “The deadline for highway cyclists to qualify for the London Olympics is September 30, and to ensure participation of two representatives of Uzbekistan at the Games, our team must be among the top four in Asia. We are objectively not strong enough to compete with cyclists of Iran, Japan and Korea, the leaders of continental cycling. But fighting for the fourth place with Indonesia and Hong Kong, who are ahead of us so far, is quite real.

Actually, the guys are working hard since January, and we literally have a race after race in spring: in Thailand, Korea, Iran... All we need is to properly distribute strengths. Malaysia was a tough challenge for our lads: not only that there were strong opponents, but the race was accompanied by torrential rains. We were deciding on whom to rely on during the race. It turned out to be Murad Halmuratov. He had the best result of 23 hours 11 minutes and 29 seconds. The 7^th place of Murad brought us 8 points. Not as much as we would like, but still... The winner of the marathon Iranian Mehdi Sohrabi finished 3 minutes and 58 seconds faster than Halmuratov. Iran's Tabriz Petrochemical Team won the team prize as well, while Uzbekistan was seventh, and the second among Asian teams.