Team Sky once again proved that they are one of the strongest team at protecting an overall race lead as they safely marshaled yellow jersey Richie Porte to the finish of today's longest stage of Paris-Nice. With just the final time trial on Col d'Eze remaining Porte is confident that he will be able to savour an overall win tomorrow afternoon.

Entering today's longest stage in Paris-Nice Richie Porte knew that he had to rely strongly on his team to defend the jersey he had collected just under 24 hours earlier on the Montagne de Lure. With a number of contenders close to his lead and the stage perfectly suited to aggressive racing, it was always going to be a tough ask for the team to control all dangerous moves on the mammoth 220 km route.

With Arnold Jeannesson in a strong 11-man group Porte's position was threatened, but Team Sky repeated what they did in most major stage races last year: controlled the peloton from the front. All day long Team Sky were seen at the head of the group setting the pace, and in the end the dangerous move was neutralized.

Porte was quick to praise his teammates for their part in his jersey defence and pointed specifically to the two men accompanying him all the way to the finish.

"I'd already been in that position before in the Giro (in 2010, ed.). It was extremely stressful. But (Vasil, ed.) Kiryienka and (David, ed.) López did such a brilliant job. Full credit to them, they really made my life easier."

"From the start, the team controlled the race brilliantly and showed we were the strongest team in the the race."

Kiriyenka was a machine

Sport director Nicolas Portal was equally impressed and described the strategy of the defence.

“It was a long, hard stage and the pace was always high," he said. "The guys did a good job as we knew we would need to cover a lot of attacks. We knew 11 riders were up front, and with one rider at 1:49 we re-grouped and began to control things."

“We have a strong team, so we knew we could control. Danny (Pate, ed.) and Ian (Boswell, ed.) did a brilliant job. I said to them they are like two American trucks! They managed 11 riders between two of them. The plan was to peg the gap at around two minutes before the last climb. Euskaltel started riding and that meant that the break was going to be caught."

Many spectators were particularly impressed by Kiryienka's effort. The tough Belarussian who joined Sky from Movistar in the off-season showed his worth by being alone on the front for the majority of the time the race was shown on television. Portal agreed in the assessment.

“After that Kiri (Kiryienka, ed.) was like a machine. He was pulling along all the way to the finish. Almost for the final 70km. There were attacks from Chavanel, Grivko and Velits and he just accelerated and pulled them back – no fuss. It went like a dream."

A confident Porte

With just the final time trial up Col d'Eze left it is now up to Porte himself to finish up the job tomorrow afternoon. Having shown his climbing legs on Friday and being a well-known time triallist his prospects are good.

Porte shows plenty of confidence going into the final test.

"I know Col d'Eze very well as I live in Monaco," he said. "I have to be confident. Yesterday I showed I had excellent climbing legs and this is a climbing time trial. There are still great time trial riders behind me, but I have a 32 seconds head start on the next guy and it's a nice position to be in."

Portal was equally optimistic and was actually more looking to a possible stage victory than worrying about losing the GC lead.

“I think Richie has the legs to win the stage," he said. "He’s motivated that’s for sure. The Col d’Eze is in his back garden, he knows it, and we are all crossing our fingers he can bring it home in style.”

Porte will start the time trial as the last rider at 16.25 tomorrow afternoon. You can follow all the action live on cyclingquotes.com/live.