Nicolas Roche has come away from his first outing of the season with 7th overall after three uphill finishes at Tour des Alpes Maritimes et du Var.
Today on stage 3, which finished on Mont Faron, the strongest of the breakaway men stayed clear to fight it out with Julien Bernard (Trek-Segafredo) winning by three seconds from Nans Peters (AG2R-La Mondiale).
A total of six escapees stayed clear, by over two minutes, of the general classification contenders, of which Nairo Quintana once again proved man of the match.
The Colombian looks back to his best having switched from an unhappy tenure with Movistar to Arkéa Samsic during the off season.
Yesterday on stage 2 he broke clear of his rivals Col d'Eze to win the stage and take the race lead. Today he was once again very strong on Mont Faron, dropping all of the general classification men apart from Romain Bardet (AG2R-La Mondiale) and Richie Porte (Trek-Segafredo).
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That trio finished 2:15 down on the stage winner and their performances were enough to wrap up the top three places overall; Quintana taking the final yellow jersey from Bardet and Porte by 40 seconds.
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Nicolas Roche (Team Sunweb) placed 13th on today's stage and finished just 26 seconds down on Quintana.
That ride, combined with finishing in the select groups on Friday and Saturday, saw him take 7th overall 1:06 down on the Colombian winner.
It was a very solid return to racing for Roche whose season ended last year in August when he crashed out of the Vuelta having led the race for three days.
He told stickybottle yesterday he felt the longer break had helped him to recover more and had had been going well in training of late.
Quintana's stage win yesterday and his overall victory today was a repeat of his performance of last weekend at Tour de La Provence where he won Saturday's stage with a dominant solo ride on Mont Ventoux on his way to overall victory.
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