Richie Porte (BMC) wins stage Seven of Paris Nice, France Road.

Richie Porte (BMC Racing) won the penultimate stage of Paris-Nice on Saturday, attacking out of a select group in the closing kilometres of the climb to the finish on the Col de la Couillole.
 Paris-Nice: Highs and lows for Dan Martin and Julian Alaphilippe Porte rescues Paris-Nice disaster with 'incredible' stage win Trek-Segafredo's Alberto Contador was next across the stage 7 finish line, with Quick-Step Floors' Dan Martin just pipping Sky's Sergio Henao for third after 177 kilometres.

 "It was an incredible satisfaction, words don't sum the feelings up," Porte said of his win after the frustration of dropping out of GC contention earlier this week. "I've got an incredible team behind me. They never lost the faith all week. I must say thank you to them. I wasn't easy to deal with this week. It's been a little bit disappointing, but today goes a little bit to the way of making up for that." With Julian Alaphilippe (Quick-Step Floors) and Tony Gallopin (Lotto Soudal) both losing time on the challenging final climb, Henao now finds himself atop the Paris-Nice leaderboard headed into Sunday's final stage.

 How it unfolded

 The peloton set out from Nice under clear and calm conditions, with a group of five quickly jumping away on the day's first ascent. Jan Polanc (UAE-Team Emirates), Axel Domont (AG2R La Mondiale), Omar Fraile (Dimension Data), Lilian Calmejane (Direct Energie) and Delio Fernandez (Delko-Marseille) led up and over the climb with just under five minutes.
 Top ten general classification result

 Sergio Henao (Colombia) Team Sky 27:01:15,
2 Daniel Martin (Ireland) Quick-Step Floors 0:00:30,
3 Alberto Contador (Spain) Trek-Segafredo 0:00:31,
4 Gorka Izagirre (Spain) Movistar Team 0:01:00,
5 Julian Alaphilippe (France) Quick-Step Floors 0:01:22   6 Ilnur Zakarin (Russia) Katusha-Alpecin 0:01:34,
7 Jon Izaguirre (Spain) Bahrain-Merida 0:01:41,
8 Tony Gallopin (France) Lotto Soudal 0:03:22 ,
9 Warren Barguil (France) Team Sunweb 0:04:07,
10 Simon Yates (Great Britain) Orica-Scott 0:04:39