Mitchelton-Scott's Daryl Impey entered the sixth and final stage of the 2020 Tour Down Under (final stage) with a two-second lead over Richie Porte (Trek-Segafredo).

Porte struggled on the descent of Willunga Hill on the final stage, and although his hopes of a seventh consecutive victory on this iconic climb were denied by the unlikely British winner Matt Holmes (Lotto-Soudal), he dashed to the overall win.

Second place on this stage was awarded a 6-second time bonus, bringing the time difference between him and Impey to 26 seconds. As a result, Porte won by 25 seconds over Diego Ulissi of UAE Team Emirates and Simon Geschke of CCC Team.

"I crossed the finish line spent," Impey told reporters, including Cycling News.

"Once I fell, I knew it was over, but I just kept fighting to the line to minimize the damage and get to the podium."

"Today I was able to get a podium finish.

"Once I knew where I was today, I struggled a bit on the bottom slope because it wasn't a great day.

"That said, I gave it my all. I'm still happy with my performance, but I'm obviously disappointed with today and I would have liked to have gone higher, but that's the way it is," Impey continued. [I don't want to make excuses. I think Richie proved here that he is the best climber. Going into today's stage, I would have preferred to have a 20-second buffer like I always have going into this stage, but this year it was much closer and he did a great race."

"I had to set a time and be in a position to potentially win. Last year I finished on Richie's wheel and this year it was possible, but my body didn't react the same way as last year," said Impey, who also explained Mitchelton Scott's stage tactics and decision not to chase the 26-rider breakaway.

"I wanted the breakaway group to stay away so that the bonuses would disappear, so tactically I think we had a good race.

Matt White, sport director for Impey and Mitchelton-Scott, was hoping for an early break to earn the intermediate bonus Impey wanted to get to extend his overall lead.

"We couldn't chase them all day. So all I could think about was getting in position where the stage belonged to another player. And I think I was able to fulfill that requirement in that the stage belonged to the others," Impey said of his stage win from Holmes, who broke away from a breakaway group that caught up with him on the final climb.

Despite Simon Yates's hard efforts to hang on to Porte's wheel, the Trek-Segafredo leader was able to take his second overall win in this race after also winning the title in 2017, with relative ease, taking all rivals off his wheel to ride away from the field.

"Richie was flying today.