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Most of the Graham Watson photos you see in VeloNews and on VeloNews.com illustrate the race action and, of course, the classic victory shots. His photos of the spring classic atmosphere are less often seen. Here's a selection of his atmosphere shots from this years Tour of Flanders, Ghent-Wevelgem, and Wallers-Arenberg.

Last year, the women’s world championship road race covered 172 kilometers, a distance that stirred little comment. With that in mind, it may be difficult to recall that as recently as 1990 a proposed 129km women’s road race was deemed “excessive” by the sport’s international governing body, which refused to sanction it. That race, and the 16 other stages surrounding it, not to mention the 22,000 feet the stages climbed and the 1067km (663 miles) they covered, took place anyway.

AThe annual Ardennes Trilogy opens this coming Sunday in Maastricht, Netherlands, with the Amstel Gold Race. A total of three classic races in the Dutch-Belgian hills will be held within one week. The ProTour race in South Limburg will be followed on Wednesday by the Fleche Wallonne (April 23) with its feared final climb on the „Muur van Hoy“ and the Classic Lüttiche-Bastogne-Lüttich on Sunday (April 27).

Base Training, Moab Style

The 32 and 36 Talus forks get a new three-position travel lever, 100mm, 120mm, 140mm and 100mm, 130mm, 160mm respectively.

The 32 Talus is pictured with the 15QR thru-axle at left, while the 36 Talus has a no-tool 20mm thru-axle. The 36 and 40 long-travel forks also get new dampers for 2009.

The remote works with all trigger shifters, but not with twist shifters. It locks via a thumb lever and unlocks via a knuckle button.

The RL Remote forks only have external adjustments for rebound and air pressure. They are factory set with the FRLC’s firmest low-speed compression setting, four clicks, to resist bob under efforts when unlocked.

Fox will offer a remote lockout on one model for 2009, the F-Series RL fork, which will be available with three different travel amounts, 80mm, 100mm and 120mm. The those forks will be referred to using the travel amount, so F100RL Remote is the 100mm fork with the remote lockout.

The 15mm diameter and standard was settled on as the best combination of weight and stiffness for trail bikes. Shimano will offer a pre-built XT wheel for the new axle design. As well as two XT hubs, one accepts six-bolt rotors and other is Center Lock compatible.

The fixed nut opposite the quick-release is removable and clockable, so that the quick-release lever can be optimally positioned.

The 15QR adds less than 20-grams to the F-Series chassis. In the 32-Series forks it reduces the weight by 26-grams, due to the re-designed and lighter lower casting.

Riders and families of the NorCal High School Mountain Bike League were greeted by a warm beautiful Monterey day when they all came out for race 4 in sunny Fort Ord. The unexpected warm temperatures added an extra stress for racers, but true to League character, most persevered to the end. Although the location was the same as the season opener, it was a very different race. With a few more steep hills, a downhill sand pit, some newly added windy single track, and poison oak that was in full bloom, the course provided a day full of epic attacks, surprises, and mishaps.

High Road's Mark Cavendish won the 207km Grand Prix de l'Escaut (also known as the Scheldeprijs Vlaanderen) for the second successive year on Wednesday just ahead of top sprinters Tom Boonen of Belgium and Australia's Robbie McEwen. Germany's Eric Zabel took fourth place but it needed a photo-finish to separate Cavendish and former world road race champion Boonen.

Chris Horner thought he was trading up when he left his role of helping Cadel Evans at Lotto to ride in support of Alberto Contador and Levi Leipheimer at Astana. Exclusions from many of the season’s biggest races, however, could mean Horner will miss the Tour de France for the first time in four years. Instead of riding up l’Alpe d’Huez come July, he’ll likely be at the Cascade Classic.

World class velodrome designer Dale Hughes and world class velodrome builder Walter von Luetcken will combine their expertise in a joint venture to design and build the highest quality velodromes on the planet. The newly formed WorldRecord Tracks, Inc. with offices in the Germany and the U.S. will "offer the most advanced design process with the most experienced craftsmen in the world," said Hughes. Said von Luetcken, "This venture will produce the finest and fastest tracks anywhere, period."

The Nissan UCI Mountain Bike World Cup 2008 announced the official launch of ticket sales for the world-renowned event. The World Cup will be held on the 6th, 7th and 8th of June 2008. Fort William will once again play host to the event recognized as “Best Mountain Bike Event in the World” for three consecutive years, as well as “Scottish Sporting Event of the Year 2006”.

The Italian Olympic Committee’s court of last instance acquitted defending Giro d’Italia champion Danilo Di Luca of doping charges on Wednesday. Prosecutors representing the Italian Olympic Committee (CONI) had been seeking a two-year suspension for Di Luca after he returned an “anomalous sample” following the 17th stage of last year's Giro in May. Had he been found guilty of a violation, his Giro title, too, would have been negated.

The Italian Olympic Committee (Coni) court of appeals on Wednesday acquitted cyclist Danilo Di Luca on doping charges which, had he been found guity, would have brought a two-year ban. Coni had requested a two-year suspension for the former ProTour champion after he returned an anomalous sample following the 17th stage of last year's Tour of Italy in May. Check back soon for more details

The Mailbag is a regular department on VeloNews.com. Write to webletters@insideinc.com. Please include your full name, hometown and state or nation. Letters may be edited for length and clarity. Writers are encouraged to limit their submissions to one letter per month. The letters published should not be viewed as reflecting the opinions, policies or positions of VeloNews.com, VeloNews magazine or our parent company.

Your tax refund is in the mail, spring is finally here, and the first quarter of the 2008 racing season is finished. Now is a good time to check on your progress and move your nutritional goals up on the priority list to ensure that they are receiving the proper focus. While you may have completed some early season races, chances are that you are building to more important races that take place in the next few months.

Weigh your body-composition goals

Pantani and Indurain 95 Worlds

Indurain Defends Olano's Attack 95 Worlds

Joshua Tree National Park

The line-up for the upcoming Tour de Georgia changed Tuesday when ProTour team Saunier Duval-Scott announced that it would not be able to attend the race. Replacing the Spanish ProTour team is domestic squad Rock Racing, which had filed a lawsuit last week seeking a court-ordered injunction to be invited to the race based on what the team said was an oral agreement with organizer Medalist Sports.

Still savoring his second Paris-Roubaix victory, Quick Step’s Tom Boonen said Tuesday he now wants to focus all of his efforts on retaining his Tour de France green points jersey this July. The 27-year-old Belgian, who celebrated victory in the legendary spring classic on Sunday, said he was going to take a 10-day break after Wednesday's Escaut Grand Prix and recover from a busy spring. "I need to relax on the days following the Paris-Roubaix," said Boonen, who has won six stages on the Tour de France. "You need to let the muscles relax after such a race.

Reigning Olympic and world champion Paolo Bettini has ruled out the possibility that he will ride Sunday’s Amstel Gold Race in the Netherlands. The 34-year-old two-time world road race champion has not recovered from the fractured rib he suffered last Thursday in the Tour of the Basque Country. According to his Quick Step team, the Italian hopes to be recovered in time for next week’s Tour of Trentino, (April 22-25), and be fully race fit for Liége-Bastogne-Liége classic on April 27.

Belgian national cyclocross champion Sven Nys signed a three-year deal with Landbouwkrediet-Töissteiner on Tuesday. The contract takes effect January 1, 2009. The 2005 world cyclocross champion, a 10-year veteran of the Rabobank squad, is vying to represent his country in the cross-country mountain bike race at the Olympics this summer in Beijing, China. "You have to feel good in a team; all noses must be in the same direction," Nys told Sporza.be. Nys will join cyclocrosser Rob Peeters and mountain biker Filip Meirhaeghe on Landbouwkrediet.

What better way to begin my maiden voyage into the world of cycling diaries then to write about the Redlands Bicycle Classic, comparing it to racing in Europe in the spring? Racing in California in March and April is not always the best preparation for Europe. It makes you soft. Nice weather, wide open roads, and a small, non-aggressive women's peloton — it’s a pampered life, including host housing that is comparable to living in "Pleasantville.” I have never seen such manicured lawns, houses the size of castles, and host families so welcoming that it is almost surreal.

Dear Lennard,
I've just read your article article about the SRAM ceramic bottom bracket and its maintenance. We at CeramicSpeed have been working with ceramic bearings for the past 11 years, introducing systems for bicycle applications eight years ago.

Dear Readers,

Welcome to the latest edition of The Prologue, the weekly summary of news from the world of competitive cycling by your friends at VeloNews.com.

Fox doesn’t have a fancy name for its somewhat sheltered race product program. It’s simply called the Fox Race Development Program, and it does just that. It takes Fox’s current products and pushes them to limits that can only be achieved by the best riders in the world, all over the world. Then modifies them to work better. Come spring Fox unveils what the program fixed, reworked and improved for the coming model year.

Stuart O'Grady took another step towards erasing the memory of the Tour de France crash which nearly ended his career with a stunning ride at the Paris-Roubaix classic Sunday. O'Grady, the first Australian to claim cycling's biggest one-day prize in 2007, went into the cobblestone-riddled epic lacking full form and knowing that only "a miracle" would give him the chance of a repeat. But he produced a stunner to finish fifth shortly after his CSC team leader Fabian Cancellara had been humbled only by an explosive winning sprint from Belgian Tom Boonen.

Italian sprinting star Alessandro Petacchi continued his 2008 winning ways in the Tour of Turkey (UCI 2.1/April 14-20). He won the first stage from Izmir to Kuþadasý in a photo finish, for his seventh win of the season. Second, by a hair, was the Argentinian Ruben Guillermo Bongiorno (CSF Group-Navigare), and third was Spaniard Javier Benitez Pomares (Benfica). The stage win also gave Petacchi the overall lead.

The Mailbag is a regular department on VeloNews.com. Write to webletters@insideinc.com. Please include your full name, hometown and state or nation. Letters may be edited for length and clarity. Writers are encouraged to limit their submissions to one letter per month. The letters published should not be viewed as reflecting the opinions, policies or positions of VeloNews.com, VeloNews magazine or our parent company.

One-time Tour de France winner Jan Ullrich continues to maintain his innocence, despite paying a "six figure" fine to end the doping fraud case that has dogged him since July 2006. The public prosecutor’s office in Bonn announced on Monday that it was formally ending an investigation of the German cyclist after Ullrich paid a fine in the case. Prosecutors had accused the 1997 Tour de France winner of taking performance-enhancing drugs, leading to a fraud case against the 34-year-old based on his alleged deception of the public, sponsors and his team.

Alexi making his move in 1984

Kyle Gritters (Health Net-Maxxis) broke free from a large break to take first at the Garrett Lemire Memorial Grand Prix Sunday in Ojai, California. He was followed closely by teammate John Murphy and Toyota-United’s Hilton Clarke. Australian Tiffany Cromwell (Colavita-Sutter Home) soloed across the line in the women’s race, well ahead of teammate Iona Wynter-Parks, who also finished alone, before Rachel Tzinberg (Bicycle John’s) took the bunch sprint just seconds later.