Richie Porte (Sky) completed the morning’s opening sprint stage in the front group and then powered around the afternoon’s 7 km time trial in nine minutes 10 seconds to wrap up his victory with a one-second margin over Manuele Boaro (Saxo–Tinkoff) and Tejay Van Garderen (BMC).

After his win Porte made sure to credit his staff at Sky, explaining how they have worked on improving his individual time trial skills. “It was quite a technical route this afternoon, and not my sort of a course, but I’ve done a lot of work with Dan Hunt and Shaun Stephens on my time trial position, and that’s definitely paid dividends,” Porte elaborated on the Sky website. “I have to pay credit to my mechanic Richard Lambert as well because he’s been absolutely fantastic working on my position. This win is for those guys as much as it is for me – we’re a team here at Sky, and that’s as much about the support staff as it is the riders.”

The Criterium International culminates with a tough stage on Sunday featuring no less than six categorised climbs, and even though Porte will be going all out to guard his yellow jersey, he will have no problems sacrificing his lead role if required, so long as it produces a Team Sky win.”

He added: “We’re in a good position with me in the lead and Froomey sitting just a few seconds back on GC. It’s going to be quite tight tomorrow because there are a lot of good riders close to us. We came in with Froomey as our leader and he’s a great friend, so if he’s got good legs tomorrow and I don’t then I’ll be more than happy to ride for him. Obviously, I’d like to finish the job off if I can, but as long as Team Sky win tomorrow it’ll be a great day and we’ll all be happy.”