The Tour de France is here and there is nothing quite like it

Another Tour is upon us. The most wonderful time of the year. The biggest race of them all. La Grande Boucle; the Large Loop. The Tour de France. Though less a loop in 2017 and more a winding journey south. No traditional clockwise or anti-clockwise route; instead a line that slithers its way down through France like a snake.

Starting in Düsseldorf, Germany, the race will travel through Belgium and Luxembourg, reaching France by day four, and the south coast of France by stage 20. That will settle the race before its sudden appearance in Paris for the sprinters classic.

Between now and then we should get everything we expect: Drama, action, story lines, pain, suffering, winners and losers. A rolling three week drama that is part soap opera, part reality TV show, part sporting event. A moving circus that will roll in and out of towns the length of France; there one moment, gone the next, in a bid to tell its story. There will be things we expect and many things we don't. Heroes will be born and legends made. Some will enhance their reputations, others will make them.

And it all unfolds before us, live. Unlike a TV show, a stage show or a movie at the cinema, there is no script. Nobody will have seen what you're seeing the night before or the week before. If you watch it live - as you now can from stage start to stage finish for the first time this year - there can be no spoilers. That's a beautiful thing about sport on the whole, but the Tour de France and everything it is, is the embodiment of this. And whether you're in it, or with it; following it through France or following it from your armchair, you cannot help but get swept up in it.

Some people will tell you the Tour de France is too big now. That it isn't what is the best of bike racing. It's almost become the cool thing in recent years to favour of the Giro or the Vuelta. But those people will still sit transfixed to their televisions watching it. Every cyclist dreams of winning a stage or a jersey of the Tour de France more than any other race. It is the race that more riders target than any other. Be it a stage win, getting in a break, grabbing a jersey for a day or two, winning a jersey or winning the whole thing. Every competitor tunes up for the Tour and every fan tunes in.

And for me it is the Tour de France, and the story of it, that lives longest in the memory of any given year of cycling. I can name the winners of the Tour de France going back almost fifty years. I cannot do that with any other race. And to tell the truth, having been cycling for over twenty-five years, the Tour was always the one event I had to watch. Only in the last half decade, with the power of the Internet allowing me to watch the sport like never before, have I begun to immerse myself in the whole calendar. Growing up riding and racing bikes I may have glanced at another race, or sat and watched Paris-Rouabaix, but it was the Tour I went out of my way for. It was the Tour I would make sure to record the half-hour highlights show of on Channel 4 every evening. Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwen were as much a soundtrack to my month of July as any hit song of any given year. I'd watch, record, watch again, note results, read my dad's copy of Cycling Weekly for race reports and results, and digest the lot. I could take or leave the rest of the year.

That was the Tour, and still is. Even now with all the other races I watch, from the Tour Down Under to the World Championships and all the Monuments and Giros and Vueltas between, it is the Tour that still captures my imagination. It's the one I look forward to most.

So then here I am and here we are, days away from another one. The whole thing right in front of us. The Tour de France for cycling fans is like a Christmas Day that lasts for three weeks and a day. Soon enough all this build-up, hype and excitement will end. On Saturday morning, at 3:15pm local time, to be exact, the looking forward will stop. The first man will roll down the starting ramp and the Tour de France will begin.