The race over more than 200 kilometres was marked by an early escape of Paul Martens (Skil-Shimano), Sebastian Siedler (Millram) and local heroes Fabian Wegmann (Gerolsteiner) and Linus Gerdemann (T-Mobile). On the dead flat course the German quadriga managed to gain a comfortable lead of more than 8 minutes. "Normally this would have been enough", a disappointed Fabian Wegmann said. Despite being brought up in Münster, local heroe Wegmann, did not have much luck on his home turf. After being mislead in the last 20 kilometres and thus loosing at least one minute of a comfortable 2 minutes lead, the otherwise most probably successful breakaway intermittendly lost its impetus. "That was the point when our motivation cracked temporarily", said later winner Paul Martens. But eventually the four man up front did not give up completely. While team T-Mobile rode tempo in the peloton, regardless of their man Linus Gerdeman still being in the breakaway, Fabian Wegmann attacked in the last kilometres on the Münster inner city circuit. Too early. "Mayby I have just lost my cool", admitted Wegmann after the race. "I would have thought that Wegmann was the strongest in our breakaway", said German talent Paul Mertens, who placed an attack in the last 4 kilometres while Wegmann, Siedler and Gerdemann were caught by the peloton. Martens managed to defend his minimal lead against the chasing peloton with sprinters like Olaf Pollack (T-Mobile) and U23 World Champion Gerald Ciolek (Wiesenhof-Akud) in the wake. "Actually this has been quite a successful season", the winner of the second stage of the Tour of Luxemburg declared after the second victory in his rookie year with a professional team.

Dr. Berthold Tillmann, mayor of Münster, was equally satisfied with the day. Despite of the mishap depriving the local crowd's darling of his chances, the premier edition of the race proved a huge success with up to 25.000 spectators only in the city of Münster. Thus the next three editions of the Münsterland-Giro over varying courses at the "Tag der Deutschen Einheit" (German national holiday) are sure.

Results

1. Paul Martens (Skil-Shimano) 4:41.00

2. Sjef De Wilde (Landbouwkrediet) 0.02

3. Marcel Sieberg (Wiesenhof-Akud) 0.02

4. Thomas Fothen (Gerolsteiner) 0.02

5. Jonas Owczarek (Team Sparkasse) 0.02