Alexandre Vinokourov has mastered stoic sufferance to such an extent that he has earned the less than politically correct nickname of Genghis Khan from the French media. Well, at least it’s more flattering than ‘Borat’.

This afternoon, Vinokourov, dead and buried as a Tour contender only yesterday, made his umpteenth comeback of this Tour and — extraordinarily for a rider who only 24 hours earlier was struggling to reach the stage finish at Plateau de Beille — pulled off a solo stage win in the Pyrenees.

His attacks are always spectacular and well worth watching, but such is the air of scepticism on this Tour, that any extravagant performance is immediately questioned.

‘Vino', however, being a no-nonsense kind of character has no time for this philosophical indulgence. Cycling is a hard sport and Vino is the sport’s ultimate hard man. Split knees or no split knees, the ice-cool Kazakh never gives up, even when reduced to tears of pain, as he was during the Alpine stages.

After Tuesday’s rest day in Pau, there is only one mountain stage and one time trial remaining to offer his rivals hope of destabilising Michael Rasmussen's inexorable progress to final victory.

Rasmussen, dominant since the Tour entered the Alps, appears to have his yellow jersey in the bag. This afternoon, in the Haute Pyrenees, Alberto Contador gave the Dane a torrid time. Yet now matter how high the Spaniard turned up the heat, he couldn’t fry the Chicken, and Rasmussen held on. The much-maligned Dane is now on the threshold of what is likely to an ultimate success.