Porte now third in the Tour de France
Australia’s Richie Porte has sent a strong warning to Tour de France rivals after literally climbing into third place ahead of a big day of reckoning in the mountains on Monday.
The 29-year-old Tasmanian is enjoying being the Team Sky leader since defending champion Chris Froome was forced to abandon the race through injury.
And he showed why he’s a contender as he moved up from sixth to third in the overall standings with a fourth placing on the first mountain stage - the 161km eighth stage from Tomblaine to the ski station at Garardmer, won by Frenchman Blel Kadri.
It was the first real opportunity for the title favourites to stretch their legs in an uphill finish and the results were significant.
Spain’s Alberto Contador showed his credentials with a second placing ahead of Italy’s Vincenzo Nibali, who retained the yellow jersey after crossing just ahead of Porte.
Nibali lost time only to Tinkoff-Saxo leader Contador, who rose to sixth overall, but Porte gave notice of his intent by losing just four seconds to Nibali and declaring the bigger climbs ahead would suit him more.
“I’m happy with how that went, it is not really my bread and butter and I think that on the longer climbs I will be better,” said Porte who is 1m58sec behind Nibali and 36s ahead of Contador.
“Tinkoff-Saxo are riding very aggressively from a long way out, a bit like Team Sky used to do.”
Nibali’s teammate and chief domestique Jakob Fuglsang is second overall but he lost 1:42 to his leader and is only 14sec ahead of Porte.
His time in the leading places will almost certainly end on Monday’s gruelling mountain stage from Mulhouse to La Planche des Belles Filles, which has seven climbs, including four first category ones.
Porte’s team has been weakened by the loss of Froome and Xabier Zandio but the Australian played down the importance of that on Saturday’s stage.
“You don’t really need teammates there when there’s other teams controlling it, that’s worked into our favour a little bit today,” Porte said.
“I think we’re happy with where we are at. I think we’re in a pretty good position right now.”
Nibali was expected to come under attack on Monday where the final climb on stage 10 is 5.9km long with an average gradient of 8.5 per cent.
“The stage to La Planche des Belles Filles is very important, there’s a very tough climb at the end and riders like (Richie) Porte, (Alejandro) Valverde and of course Alberto will do something,” said the 29-year-old.
“Then we will see for the rest of the summit finishes.”
That’s what Porte’s Team Sky manager Dave Brailsford is banking on.
“The fight in the mountains lies ahead, and we want to get to those mountains as soon as possible,” he said.
