Kaden Hopkins was denied a place on the podium in a sprint finish to the road race at the Pan American Road Cycling Championships on Sunday.

In rainy conditions, Hopkins was awarded the same time as winner Leangel Meneses (4hr 17min 49.69sec) of Venezuela as he crossed the line in sixth position. Bermuda’s other rider, Conor White, finished 20th.

It was the second time at these championships, which have taken place in Brazil this week, that Hopkins has just missed out on a medal after he finished fourth, a place in front of White, in the time-trial on Thursday.

Despite agonisingly missing out on medals in both of his events, Hopkins was pleased with his performances after a difficult couple of months with illness and attempting to recover from a huge crash.

“These are Continental Championships and one of the biggest races that we can do with the national team,” Hopkins said.

“Both of them are two of the best performances I’ve ever had at international events and I’m really happy with it.

“I’ve gone through a rough couple of months due to sickness and crashes. When you go through a period like that it’s pretty hard mentally. I knew coming here this wa s going to be my last race for the first half of the season, so I really wanted to try and get a good result.”

It could have been very different in the road race on Sunday with circumstances in the sprint finish just conspiring to prevent Hopkins picking up a well-deserved medal.

“The thing about cycling is it’s so dynamic and in the road race you can go from being in a position to podium and then be sixth in about 50 metres as it changes so quickly,” Hopkins said.

“A better result was definitely possible in the finish today but there was a coming together of two riders in front of me and one of them turned into me to protect his position. That got me a little boxed in, which was unfortunate, but I really think I was capable of getting a better result.”

Bermuda are one of the smallest teams at the championships, which makes tactics against bigger squads in the road race all the more difficult, and Hopkins was eager to point out the role played by his teammate White.

“Going into a race with only two of us it’s quite difficult to have a real plan, but the first part of the plan was to really just follow the moves with eight to ten guys,” Hopkins said.

“We followed those moves really well and shared the work for the first couple of hours but eventually a small breakaway of about four guys went up the road. That group slowly went to three and then to two and the peloton caught the last two with about 1.5km to go.

“I was on a good day and Conor was telling me that he wasn’t feeling the best but he did an amazing job on the penultimate climb moving me up and I was in a perfect position because of him with a kilometre to go.

“Unfortunatel, I just got boxed in a little in the sprint, but honestly I think it was a great team performance by both of us.”

Despite Hopkins’s near misses, team Bermuda are not coming home from Brazil empty-handed after Nicholas Narraway won silver in the under-23 time-trial on Tuesday. He also finished thirteenth in the under-23 road race, with Gabriella Arnold coming home in 53rd position in the elite women’s race.