One week after his big Milan-Sanremo win, Alexander Kristoff again found himself sprinting for big classics victory in yesterday's Gent-Wevelgem. The Norwegian was the one to open the sprint but faded back into 11th and instead it was his teammate Alexey Tsatevich who scored a top 10 for Katusha.

The Russian rider Alexey Tsatevich from Katusha Team took a very solid result at the famous Belgian classics race Gent – Wevelgem: in the mass sprint TTsatevich was able to finish in 7th position, scoring 14 points for the Russian team in the WorldTour ranking.

"We had several options for team strategy for today’s race," sports director Gennday Mikhaylov said. "Of course, Alexander Kristoff was our main leader, but in certain circumstances we expected some actions on the part of Luca Paolini and Alexey Tsatevich. Unfortunately, Luca crashed just before one of the most important climbs and could not take part in the decisive moments of the race.

"In the final we had 3 riders in the main group, so Alexander Kristoff and Alexey Tsatevich took part in the bunch sprint. Alexey took 7th. This is really good result for him in such a big race as Gent – Wevelgem. In addition, he took important points forRussia in the WorldTour.

"The Belgian races are in full progress – next week we will have Driedaagse De Panne and the monumental classics race Ronde van Vlaanderen."

Despite of a number of attacks and breakaways during 233 km from Deinze to Wevelgem, in the end the race victory was decided in the massive sprint, won by John Degenkolb from Giant-Shimano, who outsprinted Arnaud Demare from FDJ.fr and Peter Sagan from Cannondale.

Milano – Sanremo’s recent winner Alexander Kristoff, was the rider who opened the sprint with 400 meters to go. He finished 11th.

Kristoff seemed to well-placed for the sprint when he avoided the crashes that marred the finale but ended up launching his sprint a bit too early. Afterwards, he felt that he had been a bit too lonely in the finale.

"Maybe it was timing but I thought I could hold it but I couldn't," he told Cyclingnews. "At the end I was a little bit alone. Actually I had one team-mate in front of me but I don't know where he was."

Luca Paolini and Russian Champion Vladimir Isaychev crashed in one of the most decisive moments of the race. Fortunately, both avoided any serious injuries, but they lost time and could not come back in the leading group to take part in the final of the race.