The Tour de France is a grueling, three-week sporting odyssey that is revered for the challenges it presents to the best bike riders in the world.
It is a race that is not won in a single day, or even a single week, as the unpredictable nature of such a long event can mean that the chances of those that look in the peak of form can be destroyed by a single bad day.
When you watch the Tour, you have the opportunity to learn about individual riders and their teams or, more specifically, what they’re made of.
Well, Team Sky are made of something that puts them so far ahead of the others that we might as well call the race now for Chris Froome.
If he hasn’t already called it himself.
The first week, as usual, had been conducted over relatively flat terrain that was dominated by sprinters and those teams whose focus was to get their fast men across the line.
The performances of Orica-GreenEDGE especially had those Australians who had stayed up late to watch pumping the air with our fists in delight.
This was not to last, of course, once the race entered the Pyrenees, with the main contenders expected to come to the fore and start the tactical and psychological battle that would take one of them to the top of the podium in Paris.
The first mountain stage was expected to sort out the wheat from the chaff, I just didn’t expect there to be so much chaff.
This is not to say that everyone else is bad.
There are some very good teams assembled at this year’s Tour, with some excellent riders who have the ability and experience to challenge in the world’s greatest race.
As good as they are, however, last night Team Sky and their main man Chris Froome made them look like amateurs.
Sky absolutely destroyed the peloton and seem now to have taken a stranglehold on the yellow jersey that they will now defend through another two weeks of racing.
There are no certainties in sport, of course, by surely they are as much a certainty as there can be.
Coming into the last climb of the stage, there were only five riders left at the front, two of which were Sky’s Froome and Australian lieutenant Richie Porte, himself seen as a future winner of the Tour de France.
Sky had driven the peloton relentlessly all day, dropping riders regularly climb after climb after setting a pace that so many simply could not match.
Briton Peter Kennaugh did the work early, riding himself into the ground at the head of the pack before Porte took over and continued to do the same, allowing Froome to sit comfortably behind and be pulled along in his wake.
At 5km to go, Froome himself stepped up and powered away alone to streak to the finish line in a performance reminiscent of Lance Armstrong at his (performance enhanced) best.
He sent a clear message to the rest of the pack, and that message seems to be ‘You can’t beat me’.
Froome won the stage by 51 seconds from teammate Porte, with Spaniard Alejandro Valverde of Movistar a further 17 seconds back in third.
Alberto Contador of Saxo-Tinkoff, the Spanish rider seen by most as the best climber in the world, could not keep up pace with the leaders, a clear sign of the power of Team Sky.
The biggest casualty, however, was 2011 champion Cadel Evans, who clearly struggled on the last two climbs and finished over four minutes behind Froome.
More significantly, Evans was left to fend for himself in the latter stages of the race, his BMC teammates, supposedly the best climbers that could be assembled to help their man in 2013, nowhere to be seen.
Evans chances of adding to his maiden victory now seem to be over before they really had a chance to begin, sitting in 23rd in the general classification at 4:36 back.
We are still only just one week into the race, but it is hard to see how Team Sky can lose it without imploding and, judging by last year’s performance in getting Bradley Wiggins across the line, this simply won’t happen.
Contador may be the only one capable of pulling off something special, but even this looks a remote possibility, with the Spaniard in seventh at 1:51 behind the leader.
So we will sit back and watch this truly extraordinary team of riders over the next two weeks as they power towards Paris and the title that they already seem to have sewn up for their man, Chris Froome.
Some may lose interest with the result now seemingly beyond doubt, but I for one will keep watching to witness the best in the business doing what they do so well.
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