CROIX DE CHAUBOURET, France: Climbing specialist Richie Porte won Thursday’s hilly fourth stage of the Paris-Nice race, and Polish rider Michal Kwiatkowski finished third to take the overall lead.

Porte and his Sky teammates dominated on the first climbs of the week-long race, with Geraint Thomas placing second on Thursday.

“Two years ago I won this race on a mountain stage and now we have two hard stages ahead of us before Col d’Eze,” said Porte, a 30-year-old Australian. “I love Col d’Eze, I did very well on it two years ago. I hope to do it again. I love Paris-Nice, it’s a very important race for me.”

Porte, the 2013 champion, completed the 204-km ride from Varennes-sur-Allier to Croix de Chaubouret in 5 hours, 19 minutes, with Thomas recording the same time and Kwiatkowski eight seconds behind.

Kwiatkowski, who won Sunday’s prologue, took the race leader’s yellow jersey from Michael Matthews, the overnight leader from Australia.

Porte just missed out on the yellow jersey and is one second behind, with Thomas three seconds back.

“I’m a little bit surprised to take back the jersey,” Kwiatkowski said. “I had good legs today and the team did a great (job) to take me to the final climb.”

Thursday’s stage was the longest of the race and featured a hilltop finish. Sky stepped up the pace about eight kilometers (five miles) from the end and the peloton struggled to keep up.

Kwiatkowski stayed with the two Sky riders until Porte’s second burst of acceleration proved too much for him.

“I just couldn’t react,” Kwiatkowski said. “My condition is good and Saturday is a very hard stage. Given my condition, I might have chances to try and attack.”

Friday’s fifth stage is another hilly route, taking the riders on a 192.5-kilometer (120-mile) trek from the industrial city of Saint-Etienne to Rasteau in the Rhone wine region of France.

Matthews is 14 minutes behind overall.

“It was tougher than I expected,” he said. “They didn’t show much respect for the yellow jersey. There was a lot of shoving and pushing in the build up to the last climb.”

Belgian champion Jens Debusschere outsprinted Slovakian Peter Sagan as Mark Cavendish narrowly avoided a crash in the finale of the 153km second stage of Tirreno-Adriatico from Camaiore to Cascina on Thursday.

Debusschere, of the Lotto-Belisol team, powered to victory in just over three-and-a-half hours after keeping ahead of a crash in the home straight which notably took down Sky’s Italian Elia Viviani and took British sprint king Cavendish out of victory contention.

Italian Adriano Malori, who won the opening stage time-trial on Wednesday, retained the overall race lead with Sagan now in second place on the same time, thanks to a finishing bonus, with Swiss Fabian Cancellara third, one second behind.

The overall race favorites, Alberto Contador, Vincenzo Nibali and Nairo Quintana avoided the carnage and kept their powder dry, notably for the uphill finish on stage three as well as a much hillier stage four on Saturday.

A day after beating Cancellara by just one second to win the opening stage time-trial over 5.4km, Malori’s race lead was never really in danger with the sprinters and their teams keen to set up a bunch finish on the home straight of Cascina.

A seven-man breakaway was allowed to form early on but it was kept on a relatively tight rein as the bunch raced over mainly flat terrain toward the Tuscan town, about 60km west of Florence.