Australia's Michael Matthews has taken the overall leader's yellow jersey in the Paris-Nice cycle race 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 on Wednesday ahead of Italians Davide Cimolai and Giacomo Nizzolo with fourth place going to Norwegian Alexander Kristoff.
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 to take over.
"The team did a perfect job. I only started my sprint 150m from the line," said 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.
"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."
The early going in the 179-kilometre 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 kilometres 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 kilometres to go, setting up the sprint finish won by Matthews.
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