Tour Down Under Stage 5: Porte wins but Dennis hangs on to race lead (+ video highlights)

Richie Porte has won the queen stage of the Santos Tour Down Under on Old Willunga Hill for the second year running, but race leader Rohan Dennis of BMC Racing held on for second place to keep the race lead by just 2 seconds going into tomorrow’s final stage, a sprinter-friendly circuit race in Adelaide.

Porte attacked from a select group on the final ascent of the climb, only Dennis ultimately able to go with him as he tried desperately to hold on to the race leader’s ochre jersey.

The Sky man finally shook him off, but his winning margin of 9 seconds plus 10 bonus seconds wasn’t quite enough to overhaul Dennis, who picked up 6 bonus seconds for finishing in the runner-up spot.

Dennis said: “Nobody could talk, there were no words of wisdom, it was just stay at the front, stay out of the wind and just follow.

”Richie went, in hindsight, probably a bit too late because really he had better legs than me today so I gotta thank him but also my team was absolutely awesome, absolutely awesome.”

Porte said he was disappointed to have missed out on taking the race lead by such narrow margin, but added, “I am very happy to win the stage. It's a great way to start the year and my team has been fantastic.

“Full credit to Rohan,” he went on. “I mean I gave it to him as hard as I could but it just wasn’t quite to be.”

“It can still happen that I get it tomorrow but I was kind of hoping to finish it off today,” he added.

Dennis’s team mate Cadel Evans, riding the final WorldTour race of his career, finished fourth and drops one place to third overall.

UniSA-Australia’s Jack Bobridge, who attempts the UCI Hour record next week – Dennis himself is tackling it a week later – was in the day’s break on the 151km stage from McLaren Vale, and keeps the leadership of the mountains classification.

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