April 3, 2008 - After fully twelve weeks of the 2008 season, we have arrived on the brink of perhaps the greatest cycling fiesta of the year - the spring Classics season. From this coming Sunday onwards with the Tour of Flanders, just about every race that has gone before will be all but forgotten in the hype and excitement and glory that these great races exude. For with so much conflict and dispute between the governing body and race-organisers, the Classics play an even more important role this time around. Who knows, the racing may be that good that we can even forget about ASO/UCI for a while at least! Flanders is the first of the truly great one-day races that light up our sport so much at this time of the year, and it is quickly followed by Ghent-Wevelgem and Paris-Roubaix, and to a lesser extent by the Amstel Gold race one week hence. I write this just as the 3-Days of DePanne is ending, the last in a series of final warm-up races to the monuments that follow.

Such is the level of speculation that underpins Flanders' reputation that we are still none the wiser as to who can win the event itself, though it's almost always someone coming from DePanne, E3 Prijs Harelbeke or Dwars van Vlaanderen. This year's list of contenders is little different from 2007, but to the names of Tom Boonen, Fabien Cancellara, Leif Hoste, Stijn Devolder and George Hincapie, must be added Sylvain Chavanel, the Frenchman who astounded the local Flemish cyclists by taking out two of their popular semi-classics in March - Dwars and Fleche Brabançonne. Chavanel will have to ride 50-kilometres further in Flanders, and climb four or five more cobbled 'bergs', but with the wet weather that is predicted for this coming weekend, Chavanel is in with a seriously decent chance of pulling off the biggest win of his career. Of course, it is more likely that a Hoste or a Boonen will sneak away in the finale and win, although I bet Hoste won't leave it to a sprint this time around - he's finished second for the past two years because of his sprint.

I cannot wait for the real Classics to start, perhaps more so than ever before. Maybe it's because of the cloud hanging over the sport from the authorities in-fighting. Or maybe it is that Milan-San Remo didn't quite cut it, despite most fans enjoying a scintillating finale on TV last month. The fact is, Milan-San Remo was one of the slowest in recent history, and as fast and furious as that last hour was, the overall impression is that it can get a lot more exciting in Belgium and northern France these next few weeks. Although Cancellara won his San Remo brilliantly, to add the Italian Classic to his growing list of one-day victories, I believe this sport needs an even bigger Classics 'star to turn the season alight and put at least some of the problems behind us. Boonen is that 'star, the man all of Flanders, all of Belgium, wants to see win, the man who has already won Flanders twice and who can take a third win if he it all comes right for him on the day. I enjoyed looking at some of my colleagues images from E3 Prijs Harelbeke last Saturday, for they featured a duel that was conducted between Cancellara and Boonen on the cobbles of the Eikenberg ascent - it is as if they both knew each would be the other's rival this coming Sunday.

I'll be heading over to Belgium ready to partake in the daily ritual of deciphering Flemish newspapers packed with pages and pages of news, information, and reflection on the races and the racers that made the stories in those races. There's also the daily intake of Belgian beers to consider, and the sumptuous dinners that follow such beer-drinking. Not to mention our two-hour 'training' rides along the local canals - training being the most in-appropriate word to use in this context. Still, our hotel in Kortrijk becomes the base for visiting ex-cyclists and their mechanics and soigneurs, and I anticipate seeing men like Steve Bauer and Dag-Otto Lauritzen in the bar one evening - now those two have a whole mile of stories with which to amuse us all! On a serious note, I'm armed to the teeth with camera gear this week, although despite all the wet and cold weather I've experienced this past month in France and Spain, my new D3 cameras and lenses are still working at full strength. Despite what I consider as lacklustre racing, I have actually enjoyed photographing Tour de France winner Alberto Contador and his loyal teamate Levi Leipheimer, as well as a host of other stage-racers in Spain. If I can match what I saw then with what I saw in the Criterum International last weekend, and then add what I'm about to see this coming week, I'll have just about photographed the sport from top to bottom - from classics riders to big tour riders.

Graham Watson