Team Sky moved into pole position in Paris-Nice yesterday after utterly dominating the summit finish of the 204 kilometre fourth stage, from Varennes-sur-Allier to the Croix de Chaubouret, above St Etienne.
As Richie Porte, winner of Paris-Nice in 2013, took the stage win, Geraint Thomas, his Welsh team-mate, crossed the line in his wake, lifting the pair into the top three places overall behind, Michal Kwiatkowski, the race leader. The duo had attacked at the bottom of the day’s final climb, distancing Kwiatkowski by eight seconds on the line.
Porte, who, on paper, is the strongest time triallist of the top three, is now ideally placed to take his second Paris-Nice in three years in Sunday’s climactic time-trial on the Col d’Eze, just nine months after his catastrophic flop in the 2014 Tour de France.
Porte, who lives on the Cote d’Azur, knows the Col d’Eze climb above Nice very well, but is not underestimating Kwiatkowski.
“He’s a fighter and I have massive respect for him,” Porte said. “We know the Col d’Eze and do training efforts on it. So we have an advantage but we still have two tough stages until then, so it’s not over.”
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“In some ways it’s a little less pressure that we didn’t take the lead today. But I love the Col d’Eze. I’d love to settle the race on it.”
A stick-thin Porte — at 59kg (9st 5oz) he is two kilogrammes lighter than he was in March 2013 — endured a torrid 2014 season and is now determined to make amends.
“2014 was just a disaster for me,” Porte, who is expected to lead Team Sky in this year’s Giro d’Italia, said. “It just didn’t happen. I kept getting sick.”
“This year I had a really good off season and I’m more motivated than ever. I love racing in Italy and now’s my chance to go to the Giro and lead a good strong team, and that’s a massive motivation for me.”
But any dominant performance is soon met with scepticism, particularly in the aftermath of the CIRC report published on Monday, which contained one interviewee’s claim that 90 per cent of riders are still doping.
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“This report, with people throwing out wild figures — there’s nothing I can say,” the Australian said, when asked if he expected people to doubt his performances. “Whatever you say is going to be held against you. I know what we’re doing. We train hard and have a fantastic group. We’re going to keep going and let people think what they’re going to think.”
+ A touch of wheels between Mark Cavendish and Elia Viviani resulted in a high-speed pile-up on the second stage of Tirreno-Adriatico. Cavendish suffered a chain-slip inside the final 250 metres, inadvertently swerving into the Sky sprinter. Although Cavendish did not crash, Viviani was catapulted onto the tarmac, taking down several other riders in the process. Jens Debusschere, the Lotto-Soudal sprinter, took the stage victory ahead of Peter Sagan, who is still searching for his first victory of the season.