For the second year in a row, Borut Bozic confirmed his potential for the cobbled classics by finishing on the podium in the Dwars door Vlaanderen. Despite again narrowly missing out on the win, the Slovenian sprinter was pleased with his result.

Last year Borut Bozic took a big step up to become a contender in the cobbled classics. The first signs of his improvement came when he was beaten into second in the Dwars door Vlaanderen by Oscar Gatto and he went on to finish second in an even bigger race when he won the sprint behind an unbeatable Peter Sagan in Gent-Wevelgem.

Having already shown great condition in Paris-Nice, Bozic again proved his skills in today's Dwars door Vlaanderen. For the second year in a row, he finished on the podium in the opener of the holy period of the Belgian cycling season.

Bozic was well-placed throughout the race and made it into the 50-rider group that chased hard behind lone leader and eventual winner Niki Terpstra (Omega Pharma-Quick Step). He asked his teammate Francesco Gavazzi to contribute to the chase but the group never caught the leader and so Bozic could only sprint for 2nd.

Bozic opened the sprint into the headwin and did an impressive performance to almost double on runner-up spots in the race. In the end, he was narrowly edged out by Tyler Farrar but he was pleased to get an important confidence boost ahead of the bigger races.

“Rain at the start, then wind, then sunshine and then rain again – in short, a normal day in Belgium," he said. “We came and looked at the parcours twice yesterday, and that helped motivate the guys today to keep us at the front. With Muravyev in the break that put me and Gavazzi into a really good final position.

“I’m very happy with this podium. It’s important to me to start these races ready up here in the North and I know it’s important to the team because I saw how hard we all worked for this result today."