SAINT-POURÇAIN-SUR-SIOULE, France: Australia’s Michael Matthews took the overall leader’s yellow jersey in the Paris-Nice cycle race on Wednesday with his Orica teammates helping him to victory in the third stage.

The 24-year-old Matthews, who has stage wins to his credit in both the Tour of Spain and the Tour of Italy, edged home first ahead of Italians Davide Cimolai and Giacomo Nizzolo with fourth place going to Norwegian Alexander Kristoff.

“The team did a perfect job. I only started my sprint 150m from the line,” said Orica rider Matthews.

“The previous days we tried without succeeding completely. This time, the team took control of the peloton from 5km and finally it was quite easy.”

Matthews continued: “I wasn’t sure what to expect before this Paris-Nice but we had really good training with the team in South Africa and we brought very strong guys to help me here. They did the hard work, mine was the easy part. To hold the yellow jersey is incredible.

“Tomorrow is a hard stage and I don’t know the final climb. But I will hold on to this jersey for as long as I can.”

Polish world champion Michal Kwiatkowski had held the overall lead from his win in the prologue, but Matthews earned enough bonus points as the stage winner on Wednesday to take over.

The early going in the 179-km run down from Saint-Amand-Montron was marked by a breakaway by French pair Florian Vachon and Thomas Voeckler accompanied by Belgian champion Philippe Gilbert.

But they were reeled in by the peloton with about 10 kilometers to go after which Frenchman Romain Bardet, Belgian teammate Jan Bakelants and Paolo Tiralongo of Italy went clear.

In turn they were caught with two kilometers to go, setting up the sprint finish won by Matthews.

Thursday’s 204km fourth stage of the ‘Race to the Sun’ includes eight climbs with a final highlight up the Croix de Chaubouret pass overlooking St. Etienne.

In Milan, Italian Adriano Malori won the opening prologue of the Tirreno-Adriatico, a 5.4 km time trial around the Lido di Camaiore, to take the overall lead of the Italian stage race on Wednesday.

A team time trial over 22.7 km was supposed to open the March 11-17 World Tour event, however organizers were forced into drastic changes after bad weather damaged parts of the course in certain areas.

Malori’s BMC team would have been among the contenders for victory in the longer team event, however the 27-year-old Movistar rider from Parma went on to taste victory himself.

Malori clocked a time of 6min 04sec for the mainly flat course, finishing one second ahead of Swiss classics specialist Fabian Cancellara and two in front of Belgian Greg Van Avermaet.

“I’m really happy because I really didn’t expect to win, and to beat Cancellara — who is a great rider — makes it even more special,” said Malori.

Malori will wear the race leader’s blue jersey into Thursday’s first stage, a 153 km ride from Camaiore to Cascina, but will be expected to give up the race lead as the overall challengers come to the fore.

Spain’s Alberto Contador, the reigning race champion, is expected to ramp up his preparations this week for a tilt at a rare Giro d’Italia-Tour de France double.