Richie Porte (Sky) entered today's final time trial in the Vuelta al Pais Vasco as the overwhelming favourite to take overall honours but he ended up being beaten into second by Nairo Quintana (Movistar). However, the team has had a successful week with two stage wins and two riders on the final podium and sees no cause for disappointment.

Few had expected Nairo Quintana to be able to challenge time trial specialist Richie Porte in today's 24km race against the clock in the Basque Country. Nonetheless, the tiny Colombian beat his Australian rival by no less than 23 seconds to deny Porte his second overall WorldTour stage race victory this season.

On a more positive note for the British team, previous leader Sergio Henao fought valiantly to keep his podium place, and he managed to hold off Simon Spilak (Katusha) by just one second. With Henao and Porte both winning stages during the week, sports director Nicolas Portal denies that the team has any cause for disappointment despite the loss of the expected overall victory.

"Richie was disappointed when he finished but he gave 100% as always out there today, just as Sergio did as well," he said. "That was about as exciting as time trialling gets and the result could have gone numerous ways today. We've had a brilliant battle with Movistar this week and we can't really complain about two stage wins, two guys on the podium for GC, and the points classification (actually, Quintana ended up winning the points classification, ed.)."

Portal even thinks that the defeat may be a blessing in disguise.

"If anything, losing the GC today might actually be a good thing because it will keep these riders motivated to win the next race they enter - to make up for losing out here."

With Sergio Henao leading the race since his victory on the third stage, a diminished 6-man Sky team had to control the race in a very difficult terrain. Teammates Joe Dombrowski, Jonathan Tiernan-Locke, Xabier Zandio and Vasil Kiryienka did a phenomenal job throughout the week - especially in Friday's very hard stage.

Portal was happy to see his team once again show its ability to take control of a stage race.

"I'm super happy with the way we've performed over the last six days, especially given that we only had six riders here," he said. "This is one of the hardest races in the calendar, and to be able to control the road stages like we did gives everyone a lot of confidence heading into the next block of racing."

With two riders on the final podium, Sky keeps its position at the top of the team world rankings.