Richie Porte (Sky) began yesterday’s third and final stage from Porto-Vecchio to Col de l'Ospedale at Criterium International in the leader’s majestic yellow jersey and seemed destined to duplicate his victory at Paris-Nice.

However, things turned out differently for the Australian who would eventually finish the day in second-place both on the stage and the overall classification after teammate Chris Froome stole the limelight during the last five km of the race.

Although he missed out on his second overall victory of the season after taking Paris-Nice in commanding fashion, Porte appeared unperturbed by the turn of events as the Sky team ended up walking away with a one-two victory and claimed two of the three stages in yet another display of stage-race superiority.

“Tactically we were spot on today [yesterday],” declared Porte. “The team were absolutely incredible and it’s just a shame you don’t get to see all the work guys like Joe [Dombrowski], Jon [Tiernan-Locke], Xabi [Zandio], Kosta [Siutsou] and Vasil [Kiryienka] do to get us to that point where Froomey and I can attack at the end. Froomey set a hard tempo after Kiryienka’s mammoth turn and I thought I’d let a small gap go to see what happened, and that was the last we saw of Froomey, he was gone (laughs). It wasn’t planned but it worked out perfectly. We ride together every day so we know each other so well, and when he went nobody reacted so he had to continue. As I said yesterday [Saturday], the only important thing was that Team Sky won today. It’s always special to get a one-two on the podium, especially given the strength of the field we had here, and we’re super happy.”