Porte tests champ

Big guns rise to top in mountain finish

AUSTRALIA’S Richie Porte has rocketed to fifth overall and Chris Froome is the new leader after the first summit finish of the Tour de France separated contenders from pretenders.

Italian Fabio Aru won the 160.5km stage 5 to the top of La Planche des Belles Felles, seizing on Porte’s battle with Froome to break clear with 2.3km to go, and Ireland’s Dan Martin followed suit to finish second.

Porte was 20sec back, on Froome’s back wheel.

As expected, the first mountain stage has shown the real contenders for this year’s Tour and exposed the pretenders.

There is now no doubt about the form of Froome and Porte showed he is the man to take him on. Porte threw everything at him in the final kilometre of the climb to La Planche des Belles Felles but he could not crack him.

Aru was super impressive when he flew clear to the summit and looked the strongest.

But Froome and Porte are unlikely to give him that leeway again. The other stand out ride came from Martin, who attacked over the top of the big guns in the final kilometre and managed to take a handful of seconds from the pair.

The BMC team had been impressive in taking on the role of leading even though Sky should have done it. BMC set the pace in the peloton behind an eight-rider breakaway. It was a message to Sky it was here to race.

Simon Yates may be an Englishman but he is in the Aussie Orica-Scott team and he rode well to snatch the lead in the young rider competition.

What was impressive is that he attacked Froome and Porte with about 3km to go in yesterday’s tough finish.

He has enormous shoes to fill as his brother dominated this white jersey award last year but Simon does not seem the slightest daunted.

Michael Matthews was also a big winner from the day. With the expulsion of Peter Sagan, the race for the green jersey is wide open and Matthews is third but a better climber than all his rivals and is hot favourite to take the jersey in Paris.

The surprise losers were Nairo Quintana and Alberto Contador, who may have only lost a handful of seconds but showed some weakness at the first hard challenge.

The Colombian kangaroo Esteban Chaves also lost more time than expected but, to be fair, three months off the race circuit is not the best way to prepare for the biggest cycle race in the world.

The next test for the overall contenders will be on the weekend where they will face a total of seven serious climbs.

Froome said it was “an amazing feeling to be back in yellow”. “Having said that, I know the race is far, far from over,” he said.

It was Froome’s surge to try to haul in Astana’s Aru with 1.7km remaining that dislodged teammate and previous race leader Geraint Thomas.

Despite sitting 39sec behind Froome, Porte was optimistic.

“Satisfying is a good word to sum it up,” he said. “The team were fantastic today, they really took the race up.”