It wasn’t the perfect day for Team Katusha’s Alexander Kristoff, but the Norwegian rider found his way to the front for the final and sprinted in for fourth place in the men’s road race on Sunday, behind solo winner Peter Sagan of Slovakia.

“I was suffering most of the day – it was really fast right from the beginning so I knew quite early it would be difficult to win today. I was hoping to just sit in with the group I was in, as I was expecting guys like Sagan to be up front. Our team tried to put Edvald Boasson Hagen out there to neutralize him, but Sagan was just that much stronger today and was able to take off for a solo win. I’d been held up by the crash in the feed zone, so coming to the second to last climb I was hoping to catch up. I was really far back, but I knew I had to move up on the climb and that’s what I tried to do. I knew it would be difficult but I gave everything I had with what I had in my legs today on this course,” said Alexander Kristoff.

Also part of Kristoff’s group at 3-seconds was Viacheslav Kuznetsov as the best placed Russian rider in 15th place.

Kristoff also defended the team tactics that prevented Boasson Hagen from working in the chase group behind Sagan.

"He was supposed to not work but then maybe if he had caught Sagan they would have stopped working. It’s all easy to say afterwards but he was told to follow the attacks and not to work. Then he could win the sprint from the front or I could try and win from the back," he told Cyclingnews.

Sagan took off on the middle of the three consecutive climbs on the final lap, powering up 23rd Street and over the top of Governor to earn the gold medal with a winning time of 6:14.37. The silver medal went to Australia’s Michael Matthews with Ramunas Navardauskas (Lithuania) earning bronze. Kristoff was next with Spain’s Alejandro Valverde rounding out the top five.

The men’s start took place on the campus of the University of Virginia, where the peloton of 192 starters from 45 countries rolled out at 9AM for 18 km of racing before entering the familiar circuit used in all of this week’s road races. At 261,4 km (15 laps) the men were in for more than six hours of racing. An early break went clear for the first two hours, but it was nullified and others followed with the last five laps full of attacks and breaks going clear.

Team Katusha’s Daniel Moreno (Spain) and later Russia’s Viacheslav Kuznetsov were all part of the late-race action, all trying to find a way to go clear, but it was only Sagan able to finally accomplish the move and hold his position to arrive at the finish line to claim the 2015 rainbow jersey.