Tejay Van Garderen (BMC) finished second in the group sprint behind winner Richie Porte (Team Sky) and runner-up Denis Menchov (Katusha) to claim fourth place in yesterday's queen stage in Paris-Nice. Now 5th in the GC, he regrets being unable to go with Porte when he put in his furious acceleration.

Tejay Van Garderen entered this year's Paris-Nice with clear ambitions to take the overall victory and his first ever overall stage race triumph. With a team totally dedicated to the objective he handled tre tricky first stages well and looked poised to strike on yesterday's mountain top finish on the Montagne de Lure.

The winner of the white jersey in last year's Tour de France managed to cover all attacks by race leader Andrew Talansky (Garmin-Sharp), but when Porte stroke with just 1 km to go, he had to let the Australian go. His fourth place finish puts him into the overall 5th place with just two stages to go.

Van Garderen told afterwards that hard climatic conditions had made for a tactical race where Porte used superior mental and physical strength to see off his rivals.

"You kind of had to pick your moment because there was a lot of headwind," van Garderen said. "If you attack into a headwind, then you're not going to go very far. Porte definitely picked the right moment. I felt good on the climb, but I guess I'm not as explosive as I could be. Maybe that was due to the cold."

Lelangue predicts tricky stage on Saturday

With Van Garderen 52 seconds behind Porte in the GC and only the time trial to Col d'Eze a real opportunity to get back time, Van Garderen will find it difficult to win the race. Sport director John Lelangue was disappointed not to reach the stated objective, but had to admit that Porte was unbeatable.

With just a few seconds separating the riders behind Porte in the GC a lot is still to be won for the BMC team, and Lelangue asked not to underestimate today's stage into Nice.

 "Everything is still really tight," Lelangue said. "Tomorrow is maybe not the most difficult stage, but it's a tricky one, so we have to be careful. Today, the whole team was working well. We set up the plan to protect Tejay until the foot of the last climb, being there in the front and avoiding the crashes and the nervousness of the peloton. After that, we knew it would be a big one-to-one fight between the leaders."

Today's penultimate leg of the race takes in 220 km in the hills around Nice. With 71,5 km from the top of the last climb and a long, gradual descent down to the finish line on the coast, the stage seems tailor made for a long breakaway. Lelangue will, however, make sure that his troops are ready not to get trapped by any surprise attacks from their adversaries.