Entering last Sunday’s Tour of Flanders as one of the hotly tipped favourites to walk away with the honours, Peter Sagan (Cannondale) ended up disappointing those who cheered for him by finishing 17th after making no impact as the race was decided.

In today’s Scheldeprijs race Sagan took no chances in the finale, opting to sit up and roll home some 27 seconds down on winner Marcel Kittel (Team Giant-Shimano) rather than risk a crash on the notoriously risky finishing circuit in Schoten.

Thus, the Slovak's performance was in keeping with his pre-race comments that he had come to the race with the sole aim of keeping his legs ticking over and using it as purely a warm-up race before next Sunday’s Paris-Roubaix.

"The Tour Flanders was a hard race and I need to recover but I'm already thinking about Paris-Roubaix now, and I have to train too," Sagan told reporters at the start in Antwerp according to Cyclingnews.com. "I had a couple of days of rest but now this race is to keep myself in condition."

Like many of his supposed rivals on Sunday, Sagan will carry out his reconnaissance of the pavé sectors of Paris-Roubaix on Friday as he prepares for his first shot at glory at the race since 2011. His Cannondale team have insisted that he lines up at the Hell of the North purely to gain experience for future years, and Sagan himself remained uncommitted when discussing his prospects.

"As for my ambitions, well, we'll have to see how the race is going and how I'm feeling too. We'll see during the race," he said. "It's always the same – it depends on my legs."

Should he last deep into the finale alongside the likes of Cancellara and Boonen, Sagan will surely fancy his chances even though he was reluctant to publicly admit so.

"I don't know, I'm not thinking about Sunday right now," he said. "If I find myself in front it will be the same [as any other race], everybody will know that I'm there. We’ll see."