Slovakia’s Peter Sagan has been in blistering form throughout much of the current season and he was duly named of one of the biggest favourites to walk away with the rainbow jersey inn Florence yesterday.

However, partly due to bad luck, Sagan failed to make it into the decisive break of the day towards the end of the finale. At the end of the day Sagan had to settle for sixth place.

“I had bad luck,” Sagan told VeloNews.com. “I’m satisfied with sixth place. It’s another experience that I can use in the future.”

Sagan’s sentiments were echoed by his Cannondale Sports Director, Stefano Zanatta, who remains confident that Sagan may win the rainbow jersey on a similar course in the future.

“Just like this year in the classics, when he was on the podium in five times, this experience is going to pay off,” he said. “He’s going to get a big one. He can only get better.”

Sagan’s chances were severely hampered by a crash at an untimely point in the race when the Italians were upping the pace.

“I was just unlucky to have crashed in the first lap. I roughed up my left side and had trouble re-entering afterwards,” Sagan said. “The Italians were going strong in the first two laps, they broke up the group. I was lucky to have re-entered.”

But bridging across to the front after hitting the tarmac proved costly for Sagan who didn’t have sufficient strength to sit on the wheels of Spain’s Joaquím Rodriguez and Italy’s Vincenzo Nibali in the decisive stages of the race.

“I’d crashed, and then re-entering I used up too much energy. After 270 kilometres, you feel it all. Okay, Nibali also crashed, but I’m not a climber like him and Rodríguez. It turned out to be a very hard race.”