Mitchelton - Scott's Daryl Impey broke records as he became the first ever rider to win the Tour Down Under two years in a row, with Richie Porte winning for the sixth successive time up Willunga Hill but not gaining enough of an advantage to take the GC!
Stage 6 saw the longest Stage of this year's Tour Down Under at 151km, and seven riders joined forces in the day's break; Alex Dowsett (Katusha - Alpecin), Thomas De Gendt (Lotto - Soudal), Danny Van Poppel (Team Jumbo - Visma), Jasha Sütterlin (Movistar), Gediminas Bagdonas (AG2R La Mondiale), Lukas Pöstlberger (BORA - Hansgrohe) & Nicolas White (UniSA - Australia). Jason Lea (UniSA - Australia), wearing the blue polkadots of the KOM classification, was the first to attack but spent all his energy before the true break formed and missed out as a result.
The group never emmassed a particularly strong advantage of the peleton, with the top teams very aware of the significance of today's Stage. Danny Van Poppel (Team Jumbo - Visma) picked up the points from the intermediate sprints, wanting to confirm his 2nd-place position in the Points Classification behind Patrick Bevin (CCC Team).
With 25km to go, and the first ascent of the famous Willunga Hill on the cards, only Danny Van Poppel (Team Jumbo - Visma) and Nic White (UniSA - Australia) remained out in front, but were being reeled in at a rate of knots with Team Sky putting on a lot of pressure. The race-leader Patrick Bevin was seen dropping off of the back of the peleton as soon as the bunch hit the slopes of Willunga Hill. After yesterday's crash I'm sure the Kiwi was happy with just finishing the Stage and taking the Points classification jersey away!
At the front, Team Sky orchestrated a wonderful move, with Kenny Elissonde jumping off the front and Wout Poels pushing up to him - with the duo soon passing the solo leader (at this point) Nic White (UniSA - Australia). On the descent, the duo were caught and the main bunch was surprisingly back at 60 strong.
Movistar's Héctor Carretero was the next to launch an attack and was joined by Daniel Oss (BORA - Hansgrohe) & Tomasz Marczyński (Lotto - Soudal) with just 20km left to ride. Carretero tried to push on from the trio with 10km to go, but the peleton safely caught them with just 7km to ride.
With just the second 3.6km-long ascent of Willunga Hill to go until the finish, Team Sky again started putting pedal to the metal. This time Dylan Van Baarle set up an attritional style pace that quickly saw riders dropping off the back of the main group. Van Baarle put on a surge and was joined by Elissonde & Poels. Richie Porte, joined by Michael Woods (EF - Education First) and Chris Hamilton (Team Sunweb), pushed off the main bunch with 1.3km to go, and it wasn't long until he had passed Poels underneath the Flamme Rouge - though Poels jumped onto his wheel and stuck with him.
With 500m to go, Porte eventually shook Poels off of his wheel and the Tasmanian just needed to time-trial his way to the line - taking his sixth victory in as many years atop of Willunga Hill in the TDU!
Official Results obtained from procyclingstats
Stage 6 Results;
Final GC Standings;
Final Points Standings;
Final KOM Standings;
Final Young Rider Standings;
Final Team Standings;
Member of the Running Project Iniative