Ever-smiling Italian, Allesandro Ballan (Lampre) looked even -happier than usual as he took his second major ProTour one day race of the year; adding the 12th Vattenfall Cyclassic - after 229 kilometres around the German countryside in, and around Hamburg - to his '07 Tour of Flanders win.

The Grand Tour organizers have thrown it up to the UCI in a big way by stating they’ll decide who gets invited to their races – not the UCI. In December, the French ASO, Italian RCS, and Spanish UniPublic released a statement announcing their new selection criteria for the races they control - which happen to be the biggest and best on the calendar. Here’s our take on the pros & cons of this ‘new’ system…

Not to blow our horn too much – but hey – we called it: tall, slim Asturian, Samuel Sanchez (Euskaltel) today won his first classic - The Championship of Zurich - in the grand style - 'en seule' the French say, or as we say in English, 'in solitary splendor'.

The ProTour has one-day fever again as the peloton battles it out in Germany for the newly renamed, ‘Vattenfall Cyclassics’. Formerly a World Cup event, now on the ProTour, the race was known as HEW Cyclassics up until this year. The racing should be fierce, as Vattenfall is the first big test for the one-day specialists since Liege in April!