For the second year in a row, Alexander Kristoff ended the Driedaagse van De Panne by producing a solid time trial to finish the race in the top 10. Despite not continuing his trend of winning a stage, he feels fully ready for the Tour of Flanders where he hopes to improve on last year's fourth.

After a morning road stage, the afternoon individual time trial brought the Three Days of De Panne to a close on Thursday afternoon. Two solid rides from Katusha Team riders Aleksandr Porsev (at the photo) and Alexander Kristoff put both in the top ten for the overall.

Kristoff is happy with his three days:

"Many favorites for RVV skip De Panne, but I am used to do this race, so I asked for it. Last year I felt really good after De Panne. I hope for the same now. For me it looks like I am doing a Grand Tour now. I will be away from home from Sanremo to Roubaix, but it is in this period that I want to score a win.”

Aleksandr Porsev put up a time good enough for 11th place, followed by Alexander Kristoff in sixteenth.  Both jumped in the top ten overall to eighth (Kristoff) and tenth (Porsev) for the final results in De Panne. The 14.3 km effort against the clock saw Polish rider Maciej Bodnar as the best of the rest, stopping the clock with a winning time of 17.51. Second place went to Jan Barta (NetApp-Endura) at 3 seconds and FDJ’s David Boucher in third place at six seconds. 

It was also a pleasant surprise to see Alexander Porsev finishing so well in the TT and get in the Top ten overall," sports director Guennadi Mikhayylov said. "Last year he improved already a lot in time trials and he is continuing that way, which is nice."

The general classification was taken by Guillaume Van Keirsbulck (Omega Pharma-Quick Step) at a total racing time of 11:38:16.  Luke Durbridge (Orica-GreenEdge) was 7 seconds behind and former leader Gert Steegmans (Omega Pharma-Quick Step) was third at one more second behind.