Team Sky enjoyed an up and down weekend in France and Italy, with Richie Porte turning apparent defeat into victory for a second overall title in two years in the Paris-Nice ‘Race to the Sun’ on Sunday, while the British squad’s new Dutch signing Wout Poels took Saturday’s stage of Tirreno-Adriatico only to lose the blue leader’s jersey the following day in a snow-hit mountain stage won by Colombia’s Nairo Quintana.
Porte had been poised in the Paris-Nice all week, and Team Sky looked set to dominate the final weekend after the Australian and his team-mate Geraint Thomas finished first and second in Thursday’s key mountain-top finish in Central France, but on Saturday after the pair had gone clear on the final climb during the hilly road race stage into Nice, both Thomas and Porte crashed on the slippery descent to the finish.
That in turn left the way clear for the Frenchman Tony Gallopin, an attacker earlier in the stage, to take the race lead, leaving the fate of the final yellow jersey in the balance going into Sunday’s final 9.6km time trial up the Col d’Eze, high above Nice. Gallopin – who also led last year’s Tour de France for a day – was unable to produce a strong time-trial, while Porte put in one of his career-best performances to dominate the stage, overturning his overnight deficit of 36sec on the Frenchman.
“We threw time away yesterday, Geraint and myself,” said Porte. “We were in a fantastic position and to both crash like that; we had a little too much pressure in our tyres yesterday. It wasn’t ideal but for me now to win this, it is just a fantastic victory.” The world road race champion Michal Kwiatkowski, race leader for much of the week, finished second overall at 30sec, while Thomas’s fine run of form continued with fifth overall.
Sir Bradley Wiggins failed to complete the final World Tour stage race of his career, missing Sunday’s time-trial in Nice after a low-key week in which the 2012 Tour de France winner had been prominent on the front of the peloton on the flatter stages presumably with his eyes on building form towards his final objective in his career with Sky, the Paris-Roubaix Classic on 12 April. Wiggins has, on the other hand, been cleared by the UCI to race the Tour of Yorkshire from 1 May after his Sky contract ends on 26 April.
In Italy, the rain which doused the Six Nations international in Rome fell as snow high up in the Apennines, hitting the final kilometres of the Tirreno-Adriatico stage up the 17-kilometre climb to the ski resort at Terminillo. With the roads at the finish covered in snow, the conditions suited the Colombian Quintana, who forged his victory in last year’s Giro d’Italia in similar weather, and who sprang away from an elite leading group just as the sleet turned into snow.
Behind, the chase was taken up by the Dutchman Bauke Mollema, ahead of the double Tour de France winner Alberto Contador, but as was evident at last year’s Giro and the 2013 Tour de France, once Quintana has fled the pack in the mountains he is almost unstoppable, and he remained clear to the finish at Terminillo. While the overnight leader Poels lost over 90sec and slipped to 10th overall, Quintana moved into a 39sec lead on Mollema with a flat stage to come on Monday followed by the traditional short concluding time-trial at San Benedetto del Tronto.
The young Mancunian racer Adam Yates continued his impressive progress in only his second year as a professional, holding on to Contador and other seasoned stage racers such as Joaquim Rodríguez of Spain and Rigoberto Urán of Colombia to finish seventh on the stage and move into sixth overall. He is unlikely to threaten Quintana who looks set for overall victory but at just 22 years of age this looks like another major step forward.
