Tour Down Under: Porte wins stage 3 in Paracombe

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Richie Porte (Trek-Segafredo) took control of the 2020 Tour Down Under on stage 3 between Unley and Paracombe on Thursday, attacking at the bottom of Torrens Hill Road and climbing away from his rivals and into the race leader's ochre jersey.

Porte won by five seconds over a chase group that featured Rob Powers (Team Sunweb) in second and Simon Yates (Mitchelton-Scott) third, along with Rohan Dennis (Team Ineos) in fourth, Diego Ulissi (UAE Team Emirates) fifth, defending Tour Down Under champion Daryl Impey (Mitchelton-Scott) sixth, Dylan van Baarle (Team Ineos) seventh, Simon Geschke (CCC Team) eighth and George Bennett (Jumbo-Visma) ninth. Mitchelton-Scott's Luke  Hamilton finished another eight seconds back to round out the top 10.

"Hats off to the boys," Porte said in the finishing straight. "They did a really good job in controlling it. I felt good at the bottom of the climb and got a bit of a gap there. It was just a shame there was such a headwind there in the final, because we could have really done some damage."

Porte played the familiar climb perfectly, having won here in 2017 after learning a tough lesson in 2015 when Dennis stole the stage from Porte and Cadel Evans as the pair watched each other.

Porte left nothing to chance on Thursday, jumping away from the select climbing group that formed at the bottom of the climb and driving his pace all the way up the 1.7km ascent to the line. 

Yates jumped out of the chase group but was unable to get back on terms with Porte and eventually succumbed to Powers for the runner-up spot. Defending Tour Down Under champion Daryl Impey's sixth place on the day lifted him to second overall, six seconds behind Porte, but that's obviously not where the Mitchelton-Scott rider was hoping to be at the end of the day.

Powers is now third overall behind Impey, nine seconds back, with Yates taking up the fourth spot at 11 seconds, and George Bennett in fifth at 14 seconds.

How it unfolded

The 131km stage from Unley to Paracombe finished with a climb that was sure to shake up the general classification. But before the peloton could get to that final 1.7km ascent, the riders traversed a twisting, hilly route that backtracked several times and reversed directions for the finale after four 11km loops around Paracombe.

The day offered two intermediate sprints with 47km to go and 3km to go, and KOM points were on offer 500 metres from the finish.

The riders broke away form the peloton in the opening kilometres and would animate the day's racing. In the move were Geoffrey Bouchard (AG2R La Mondiale), Guillaume Boivin (Israel Start-Up Nation) and Miles Scotson (Groupama-FDJ).

The trio worked well together and built a gap of nearly four minutes that stuck for awhile as Trek-Segafredo and Mitchelton-Scott shared pacemaking duties back in the peloton.

Even when Boivin suffered a mechanical and needed to stop for a bike change, Bouchard and Scotson waited for the Canadian so as to keep their trio intact for the long day ahead.

The trio's gap was down to 2:30 with 55km remaining, and when they reached the first intermediate sprint in Inglewood they didn't break their rhythm to contest it but rolled through in the regular rotation with Scotson taking maximum pints.

The wheels started to come off as the finale neared, however, with Boivin the first to pull the plug on the move with less than 20km to go. Scotson then put paid to Bouchard and left the Frenchman behind, but the young Australian would soon succumb as well, leaving the peloton intact with less than 10km remaining.

From there it was a battle amongst the GC riders' teams to fight for position leading into the final climb. The racing got tense and several crashes ensued as riders started to drop, but Porte's Trek-Segafredo team kept the 2017 winner safe and shuttled him to the bottom of the hill to take on his rivals.

Results

Overall standings