Will today be a day for the sprinters, a day for the tough men or like so often in the Continental Tour's division two one for the breakaway?
The feel amongst the journalists early doors is that today things may be controlled with the wind quite high and mainly flat parcours. There are some of the best roulers in the division here and if the likes of Het Nieuwsblad, Alstom, UPC and Tyskie get their squads together it'll be tough.
This seems confirmed when a relatively small and weak breakaway group get clear and dominate the days action.
It is an eclectic group of riders with Clancy and Ochoa having probably the best kicks and Slovak Kasildo certainly the best on the flats.
The first cobbled section see's the break take it easy over it as it is still with 150km to go:
The pack are not in chase mode yet but it is interesting to see Metinvest, Tyskie and Ekspla towards the front. These three teams are clearly readying their troops for later on having no riders in the breakaway.
We reach about 100km to go before the pack starts to stretch out indicating the pace is high. The gap to the break has steadily increased to six minutes and this means we are going to have a fairly testing game of cat and mouse.
The 'cats' in the pack taking down the challenge of the chase are Metinvest, Tyskie, Alstom and Het Nieuwsblad.
The 'mice' are doing a good job of staying clear though with gao remaining at nearly four minutes with 50km to go. This leads to some speculation that they will remain clear before the finish as we have seen so often.
There are three late little climbs that may not suit the breakaway, but some of the teams with riders in the break clearly are gambling everything on the stay clear mentality as the rest of their teams drop back from the pack.
All four of the Cativas, AMEXs, Petrobrus, Kingspan, Armavias, ENRCs, Eurovisions plus some other weak riders are dropped from the pack before the triple climbs.
The first climb then comes with 30km to go and Metinvest are very present at the front with Maxim Rudenko and Juri Krivtsov doing some big turns. The gap is still at 2.10 at the bottom so there is still some hard work to do.
As Metinvest pull over there is clearly some games going on with no-one else willing to sacrifice numbers forward. Heading up to the second climb with 18km to go the gap is still at 1.20 and it is still Metinvest chasing at the front with Tyskie and Het Nieuwsblad waiting ominously.
It feels as if the big guns are waiting for this last climb with 11km to go, which is also cobbled. The question is though can anyone from the break put in a late dig as they just may have a chance of holding off to the finish if they do.
The break leads up this last hill with a 50 second lead, they all look knackered...
Behind the pace is really high and it is Stijn Vandenbergh who is the sacrificial lamb for Het Nieuwsblad. He drives and insane pace up this section.
It leaves a group of 44 riders chasing and the pace by Vandenbergh leads to the break being caught with 7.5km to go.
It seems we are settling in for a sprint, but noticing the lack of a structured sprint train Antonio Bucciero has a different idea and attacks with 5.5km to go.
The lack of an immediate response see's Jens Renders join in.
He is joined by Guillaume Blot Mindaugas Striska
and Robby Meul
This looks like a decisive move as all five are strong punchaers and with 2.7km to go they have a 45 second gap on the floundering pack. None of the four can get up to the Italian Bucciero quite, which is a problem as the Metinvest rider has the best sprint.
Gazprom finally get some sort of sprint train going and they are leading Bart Wellens out with Rik Kavsek following a couple of riders behind.
Up front the four riders just cannot get up to Bucciero who is extending his advantage coming under the kite.
The sprinting pack are catching the leaders but not fast enough, the four behind are fairly evenly matched with Renders getting inside of Meul to move into second in the final 300 metres. Striska is holding Blot for the fourth place.
But they are 50 or so metres back from the winner who has time to celebrate lavishly, Bucciero looked good down in Italy for the Srade Appia Antica race. He gets his win up here in Holland.
Kavsek wins the sprint for sixth with Van der Ginst coming on late for Het Nieuwsblad, who have three riders in the top 15 which is becoming their usual trick.
Suray and Fouche make it two in the top ten for Samsung and Metinvest. Ochoa from the break rather surprisingly sprints well for 12th maybe he should have tried a late attack?
