Australian Sky's Richie Porte took his second French Classic win with a stellar time trial performance to overcome a 36-second gap to former leader and favorite Tony Gallopin.
The leader of the first lead race was the young Polish world champion Michal Kwiatkowski of Etixx-Quickstep, who won the prologue in Paris and kept the yellow jersey on the flat stage.
Richie Porte took a big step towards victory on stage 4 in the mountains. Finishing on the Croix de Chaubouret, he escaped with Sky teammate Geraint Thomas to finish first. That puts him just a second behind today's third-place leader Kwiatkowski.
The standings changed on Stage 6 as Tony Gallopin's good attack earned him the yellow jersey and a 36 second lead over Richie Porte due to a car accident that left him out of the first chasing group, he finished the race after 1 minute. Former leader Kwiatkowski moved up to third overall, two seconds behind Porte.
The final stage is a 9.6 km time trial to the city of Nice in heavy rain and strong winds. Winner Richie Porte finished 20:23, 29 seconds ahead of Kwiatkowski and 1:39 ahead of Gallopin. Kwiatkowski finished second overall and won the best junior white jersey. Slovenian Simon Spilak finished second in the time trial and third in the combined.
The mountains category was dominated by Lotto Belisol's Thomas de Gendt and the points category was won by Orica-GreenEDGE's Michael Matthews.
"It's one of those iconic games and to me I think it feels sweeter than the last. It was tough, they put everything into us yesterday and they won. Winning the Col d'Eze was amazing like last time" said Porte.
It's been a very good and promising start to the season for Sky, but Michal Kwiatkowski has once again shown that he will be a serious contender this year.
