Simon Gerrans was one of the pre-race favourites for Paris-Nice but the Australian champion has been struggling with illness and allergies and has now left the race as part of a pre-planned move. His Orica-GreenEDGE team failed to make an impact in yesterday's stage but are still hopeful that Michael Matthews will shine in the upcoming stages.

A late race breakaway again stole the show at Paris-Nice with Carlos Betancur (Ag2r-La Mondiale) winning a three-up sprint on stage five. Betancur bested Bob Jungels (Trek Factory Racing) and Jakob Fuglsang (Astana) to the line as the trio narrowly managed to hold off the chase group.

Bryan Coquard (Europcar) won the sprint for fourth, 2” behind Betancur, while Geraint Thomas (Team Sky) finished safely in the 59-strong chase group to retain the race lead. Although ORICA-GreenEDGE’s Michael Matthews elected not to contest the sprint, he was the Australian outfit’s best finisher in 13th place.

"We wanted to be in the early break with Jens Keukeleire or Simon Yates," sports director Laurenzo Lapage said. "If we made it to the finish with numbers and Gossy [Matt Goss] had made it over the top of the last climb, we would work for him. Bling [Michael Matthews] was our second option today.

"We missed the break, so we decided to focus on the finish. Again, we didn’t have the responsibility to chase. It was a controlled race until we hit the climbs.

"The [penultimate] climb was on a big road, but once we got over the top, we knew it was much more narrow. We had to be in a good position on the climb because after the summit, it would be almost impossible to move up.

"We had already lost Gossy and Alba [Michael Albasini] by that point [at the bottom of the final climb]. Until two kilometres from the summit, we still had everyone in that front group. We lost Yates, Hayman and Docker over the top. That left us with Gerro, Keukeleire and Bling in the yellow jersey group when the action started over the top of the climb."

Matthews decided not to contest the final sprint.

"He wasn’t in a good position. Thinking about the stages coming up, it was better not to take too many risks.

Simon Gerrans won't take the start in today's queen stage but it was no hasty decision taken by the team.

"It was a pre-planned withdrawal," Lapage said. "He was only scheduled to do five stages. He was sick before Paris-Nice and his allergies typically plague him a bit during this time in the season. He’s heading home to recover and train more specifically for Milan-Sanremo."

You can read our preview of stage 6 here and follow our live coverage of the stage at 14.25 CET on www.CyclingQuotes.com/live.