Paris - Nice GC battle set for stage 5 face-off.

With an important fifth stage pending at Paris - Nice on Friday, Sky general classification hopeful, Richie Porte, held on to his position in the top-10 by finishing in the front group on Thursday, thus remaining seven seconds adrift overall leader Andrew Talansky.

"Again the plan was to make sure we didn't lose time with Richie," stated Sky sports director, Nicolas Portal, on the team's website. "We knew full well that it had the potential to be a tricky finish. It was a shame that David Lopez got held up by the puncture. Vasil Kiryienka was nice to give him the wheel in the spur of the moment. Richie was comfortable up there and he is growing in confidence.”

"It was a tricky start and the peloton went really hard up the first climb. Lots of riders were dropped straight away and lots of other riders wanted to go up in the break. When it's that hard, it's only the really strong riders who can go so we needed to be careful who went up the road.”

BMC's contender for overall victory, Tejay van Garderen, moved up three places on GC on Thursday with his teammates assuming acutely belligerent roles in the finale suggesting that they will be more than happy to go on the offensive once again come Friday. A busy and eventful stage will await Porte.

"Any rider who wants to fight for the GC will need to be up there on tomorrow's [Friday’s] stage," said Portal. "All the teams know this so we are expecting a big fight."