Richie Porte wins second stage at Criterium International

The Australian completed the morning's opening sprint stage in the front group and then powered around the afternoon's 7km time trial in nine minutes 10 seconds to wrap up his victory with a one-second margin over Manuele Boaro (Saxo-Tinkoff) and Tejay Van Garderen (BMC).

Porte's team-mate Chris Froome, meanwhile, missed out on the podium places by just one second after posting the fourth fastest time of the stage, ensuring Team Sky are well positioned heading into Sunday's mountainous finale.

After the stage, Porte told TeamSky.com: "It was quite a technical route this afternoon, and not my sort of a course, but I've done a lot of work [...] on my time trial position, and that's definitely paid dividends.

"We're in a good position with me in the lead and Froomey sitting just a few seconds back. It's going to be quite tight tomorrow because there's a lot of good riders close to us.

"We came in with Froomey as our leader and he's a great friend, so if he's got good legs tomorrow and I don't then I'll be more than happy to ride for him. Obviously, I'd like to finish the job off if I can, but as long as Team Sky win tomorrow it'll be a great day and we'll all be happy.

"Right now I just want to enjoy the moment, and the fact that I have one more lion to add to the collection (laughs). I'm really happy on this team and in a really good place.

"There won't be much celebrating tonight because we're all focused on tomorrow. We've got a great team here to defend and that's what we'll aim to do."

Elsewhere on the stage, Andy Schleck finished 44 seconds back in 65th position, with defending champion Cadel Evans 68th (+45) and 2012 Tour of Britain winner Jonathan Tiernan-Locke in 92nd (+1'02").

Stage two result and general classification

1 Richie Porte (Aus) Team Sky, 2:11.53
2 Manuele Boaro (Ita) Saxo-Tinkoff, +1sec
3 Tejay van Garderen (BMC), same time
4 Chris Froome (GB) Team Sky, +2
5 Andrew Talanksy (USA) Garmin-Sharp, +7
6 Jean-Christophe Peraud (Fra) Ag2r-La Mondiale, st
7 Bob Jungels (Ned) RadioShack-Leopard, st
8 Andreas Kloden (Ger) RadioShack-Leopard, +9
9 Jerome Coppel (Fra) Cofidis, +11
10 Bauke Mollema (Ned) Blanco, st