After spending most of July following the Tour de France, BBC Radio 5 Live’s Peter Slater will be covering the Tour of Britain.

Here, he looks ahead to the 2009 edition of the race.

I spent most of July with Graham Jones in France. We were covering Le Tour for the BBC, but when he wasn't busy either driving us round the country, running around various parks or improving my cycling knowledge, Graham was putting the finishing touches to this year’s Tour of Britain.

He's the Route Director, and I know how hard he's been working to make sure all is well.

By the end of July we knew that the race had a top drawing card: The Cannonball was down to compete for Team Columbia. Unfortunately, Mark Cavendish has since been switched to the Tour of Missouri in the United States, to help George Hincapie’s defence of his title.

Despite his absence though, Cavendish’s four wins in the Tour de France, together with the success of British cyclists in Beijing have really helped Graham Jones and the Tour of Britain organisers.

This year’s Tour was already bigger and better, with a London criterium to start things off, followed by stages in all four corners of the United Kingdom, and a finish in Liverpool.

Now it has its strongest field yet. I calculate that even without the world’s best road race sprinter, there are three Olympic medallists and two Tour de France 2008 yellow jersey holders.

Team Columbia include double Olympic gold medallist Bradley Wiggins, who’s joined by Tour yellow jersey holder Kim Kirchen along with Bernhard Eisel, Thomas Lovqvist and the evergreen Roger Hammond. Not bad for starters.

Barloworld have their own gold medallist in Geraint Thomas, plus Steve Cummings, who performed so creditably in the Olympic time trial and recently won the Coppa Bernocchi in Italy.

Rapha-Condor-Recycling are led by Chris Newton, hero of the points race in China. That's three Olympic medallists before we even start looking at the quality of the rest of the field.

Roman Feillu is back to defend his title, having held the yellow jersey in France in the summer, and he must be one of the favourites to win.

Team Garmin Chipotle come loaded with talent; David Millar leads, Magnus Backstedt and Julian Dean are also there.

The Great Britain team looks strong, with Ben Swift out to defend his King of the Mountains title from 2008.

At the time of writing, LPR Brakes include Alessandro Petacchi and Danilo di Luca, as well as a Maserati and a Ferrari.

Tyler Hamilton’s in the Rock Racing team, and at 47, Malcolm Elliott is still going strong in the Pinarello Candi TV squad.

Usually, by the time we reach September the season is running down and the Tour of Britain becomes something of an afterthought. Not this time.

We'll be bringing you daily and updates on BBC Radio 5 Live, as well as reports and features on the BBC Sport website.

But don't just sit there clicking the mouse, go out and watch; I don't think you'll be disappointed.

But who do you think is going to win?