Simon Gerrans will win a record fourth Tour Down Under, despite a third-straight Willunga stage win for fellow Australian cycling star Richie Porte.
Gerrans will take a nine-second lead over Porte into Sunday's Adelaide Street Race and only a disaster can unseat the Orica-GreenEDGE leader.
It will be the second-straight season that Porte has finished second overall at the Tour.
He launched a blistering attack just over a kilometre from the Willunga summit finish and it briefly begged the question whether Porte might snatch the overall lead from Gerrans.
But Porte started the 151.5km Queen stage from McLaren Vale to Willunga in 10th place overall, 36 seconds off the pace.
Gerrans finished in eighth place on Saturday and even with the 17-second time gap, plus Porte's 10-second time bonus for winning the stage, his overall lead was safe.
Porte lost eight seconds in stage four, but was not wondering what might have been.
"If I'm going to finish second, I'd rather finish by nine seconds to Simon rather than one second," he said.
Porte also dismissed any suggestion that he might try to contest the sprints on Sunday in an effort to bridge the gap to Gerrans.
"I couldn't sprint out of sight on a dark night," he said.
Last year, Porte lost the Tour to Rohan Dennis, now his teammate, by two seconds.
Gerrans admitted the succession of attacks on the 3km climb to the finish, highlighted by Porte's decisive surge, had put him under pressure.
"That's one thing I was trying to avoid there, panicking, going too hard, exploding," he said.
"If I just kept my cool and rode my own pace even when they attacked me in the final, it should be enough to hang on and that was just right.
"I expected Richie to attack and boy when he attacked he went fast.
"The guy is one of the best in the world at what he does."
Winning the Tour again will be particularly sweet for Gerrans after last season was wrecked by a succession of crashes.
He missed the race last year with a broken collarbone.
"That (missing the race) hurt a lot, but I feel like I have really made up for it now," Gerrans said.
Only Colombian climber Sergio Henao (Sky) and in-form Canadian Michael Woods (Cannondale) could go with Porte when he attacked.
Porte first dropped Woods and then Henao.
His first win at new team BMC is a major morale boost, with the Tasmanian deliberately starting the season underdone ahead of the July Tour de France.
"I'm not in fantastic shape just yet, so it's a good stepping stone into probably the most important season of my career," he said.
Porte has now won three of the five Willunga stages since the summit finish was introduced there in 2012.
Henao is now third overall, replacing Porte's teammate and defending champion Rohan Dennis, while Australian Jay McCarthy (Tinkoff) dropped from second to fourth overall.
Dennis lost touch on the climb to the finish and fell out of the top 10 overall.
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