Taylor Phinney (BMC), who created worldwide headlines last week for his long, epic solo ride in cold and rain to unsuccessfully avoid elimination on the penultimate stage of Tirreno-Adriatico, said he never gave up after crossing the final climb with the chase pack in yesterday’s chaotic and snowy edition of the Milan-San Remo classic.

"I saw I had a chance to bridge across to the front group," he told the BMC website. "It was a split-second decision I made at the bottom of the Poggio and I almost caught them at about 400 metres. But then they started their sprints."

Gerald Ciolek (MTN-Qhubeka) ultimately took victory in a six-up sprint, edging out Peter Sagan (Cannondale) and Fabian Cancellara (RadioShack-Leopard) by the skin of his teeth, while Phinney rolled across the line for a top 10 result in his second appearance in the race.

"I went through some different fields of emotions, being in the snow and then being on the bus and then starting again," an exhausted Phinney said. "I just kind of hung on and couldn't really tell what was happening most of the time because it was just chaos and cold and wet."