Richie Porte survived yesterday's tricky Tirreno-Adriatico stage and is now heading into two big mountain stages over the weekend. Still regretting the poor team time trial result, he is confident in his form and expects today's stage to be more decisive than Sunday's.

Richie Porte sits just 39 seconds off the pace heading into the mountains at Tirreno-Adriatico after limiting his losses on the stage three uphill sprint into Arezzo.
 

Porte was well protected once again as the pace ramped up on the day’s finishing circuit, with Bernhard Eisel and Sir Bradley Wiggins guiding him towards the front of the peloton before Ian Stannard dropped him off on the sharp drag to the finish.

The stage victory was contested by the punchier sprinters however, with Porte choosing to sit on Alberto Contador’s (Tinkoff-Saxo) wheel as the fast men came to the fore. It was Peter Sagan who emerged victorious, with the Cannondale rider leaping out of Philippe Gilbert’s (BMC Racing) slipstream before wrapping up his second win of the season with two bike lengths to spare.

Michal Kwiatkowski battled brilliantly to pip Simon Clarke (Orica-GreenEdge) into second place, and that result meant last week’s Strade Bianche winner took control of the blue jersey with a 10-second advantage over his Omega-Pharma – Quick-Step team-mate Rigoberto Uran. Porte rolled home six seconds adrift leaving him well positioned ahead of Saturday’s summit finish.

"I've seen the video of tomorrow's stage (Saturday) and it's going to pretty decisive, even more so than Sunday," Porte told Cyclingews. "Sunday's finish is steep but the time you can loose on a short climb like that is not usually the same as the long climb up to the finish at Selvarotonda.

"The flip side is that you can gain more time on climbs like that. I'm confident. It'd be nice to claw back some time. 27 seconds in the team time trial is a fair bit to loose. But there's not much we can do about that. We can only take it as it comes."

You can read our preview of stage 4 here.