Stage 3 of the 2020 Tour Down Under saw the first GC battle of the race in Paracombe, where Richie Porte (Trek-Segafredo) jumped away from the peloton on the climb to the finish, taking the stage win and the overall lead.
Porte beat Robert Power (Team Sunweb) into second place by five seconds, while Simon Yates (Mitchelton-Scott) recovered impressively from his stage 2 crash to take third.
With the bulk of the day run on flat and rolling roads, it was always going to come down to the climb at the finish, and so it proved as a select lead group formed on the 1.1km, 9.5 per cent hill.
After Porte's Trek teammate Juan Pedro López pulled back an attack from UAE Team Emirates' Marco Marcato, it was time for the Tasmanian to jump away. Despite immediate efforts by Yates and Rohan Dennis (Team Ineos) to keep him on a tight leash, there was no stopping Porte on the drag to the finish.
Porte duly grabbed the win, his eighth career Tour Down Under stage success, which includes six at Willunga and one on the same climb back in 2017, and with it a six-second lead over defending champion Daryl Impey (Mitchelton-Scott) at the top of the general classification.
All eyes will now be on the final stage of the race, the traditional decider at Willunga, where the destination of the ochre jersey will be determined.
