This Tour de France was supposed to be a two-horse race, and with one of the favourites now out of contention it leaves Alberto Contador primed to claim yet another Grand Tour success.

Despite losing time to Vincenzo Nibali on the cobbles, many still fancy El Pistolero to make it back up in the mountains given his stunning form this season.

So is it now the Spaniard’s race to lose?

Nibali is going to take some beating if he transfers his current form into the Alps and Pyrenees but form so far this season suggests Contador is more than capable of clawing back seconds, even minutes when the roads head skywards.

Richie Porte, Team Sky’s new leader, made up a bit of time on Contador too on stage five, with his late acceleration and will profit from a team originally built around the defending champion.

In-form Michal Kwiatkowski, too, is still within touching distance of the yellow jersey and would have been even closer had it not been for an ill-timed puncture.

Nibali and team-mate Jakob Fuglsang, meanwhile, have currently locked out the top two spots on the podium.

Contador certainly has the ability in the mountains to beat all of them, but this will – hopefully – be a far from straight-forward affair for the Tinkoff-Saxo man.