Climbing specialist Richie Porte won Thursday's hilly fourth stage of the Paris-Nice race and Polish rider Michal Kwiatkowski finished third to reclaim 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 the 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 204km 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 back from Australian Michael Matthews who had won it 24 hours earlier.
Porte just missed out on the yellow jersey and is one second behind, with Thomas three seconds back.
Matthews is 14 minutes behind overall.
"It was tougher than I expected," the Orica-GreenEDGE rider 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." Thursday's stage was the longest of the race and featured a hilltop finish. Sky stepped up the pace about 8km from the end and the peloton struggled to keep up.
Friday's fifth stage is another hilly route, taking the riders on a 192.5km trek from the industrial city of Saint-Etienne to Rasteau in the Rhone wine region of France.
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