Blazin' Saddles: Is Froome an alien, and four other questions from week two

Just five stages separate Chris Froome from a second Tour de France victory in Paris as we take a look back at a hugely eventful second week in the world's biggest bike race.

With two wins apiece for Britain and Spain, plus victories for Poland and Belgium, and a memorable bridesmaids brace from the indefatigable Peter Sagan, it was a week to remember as the race passed over the Pyrenees before cutting across to the Alps.

Before the first of four decisive stages in the mountains we look at the five key questions cropping up since the last rest day in Pau.

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Former French rider Laurent Jalabert caused a stir after claiming on French TV that the race leader was "on another planet" - employing the same phrase as famously used by L'Équipe in describing Lance Armstrong's swashbuckling performances of old.

In a medley of cynicism and insinuation Jalabert also told RTL radio that Froome's stage 10 victory at La Pierre-Saint-Martin had left him "speechless" and "a bit uncomfortable".

When asked by a British TV reporter to clarify just why he told France 2 that Froome's performances were "verging on the ridiculous" Jalabert simply denied having made such a claim. Quizzed about his own alleged doping past, the sprinter-cum-climber chose to scarper.

What particularly stood out in Jalabert's incredulous tirade was that Froome had made his rivals "explode one after the other, like popcorn, with time losses verging on the ridiculous in some cases. Nibali, the defending champion, lost more than four minutes."

Almost as ridiculous, perhaps, as the time in the 1995 Tour when Jalabert himself roared up the Col de la Croix Neuve in Mende take victory on a day Miguel Indurain, the defending champion, lost more than five minutes...

Perhaps the stat that we should be looking at is this: discounting the opening ITT, the TTT and the crosswind splits in stage two, Froome has only taken 1:16 out of Quintana in three uphill finales - and 12 seconds of those have been time bonuses.

These are hardly the time gaps of an alien from the other side of the universe.

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It's a strange warped world that we live in where Team Sky riders get abused, punched, doused in urine and even nudged off the road by a bitter Frenchman* - all because a load of armchair Paul Kimmages, bitter pseudo-Scientists on Twitter and washed-up has-beens in the French media have skewered what they believe to be their riders' power data to fit with their own narrative - while Peter Sagan stays smelling of roses.

By the laws of their logic, Sagan should be a movable human punchbag and public urinal - made all the more noticeable by being painted bright green.

"He is by far, for me, the strongest rider in this Tour de France," Tinkoff-Saxo's flamboyant owner Oleg Tinkov told ITV's Ned Boulting after his rider's fifth second-place of the Tour at Gap.

"I know that somebody in Britain thinks Christopher Froome is the strongest, but that's not true. It's Peter Sagan – and those who don't admit that don't know cycling."

He may now be on a winless streak that stretches back more than two years, but Sagan's record of finishing in the top five in 11 of the first 16 races of this Tour is quite astonishing.

Sagan really is - without any innuendo - on another planet when it comes to his peers. Just ask any of his fellow escapees on Monday's stage 16 who tried to keep up with the Slovakian on either of the two descents.

The ride to Gap was Sagan's third appearance in as many days in the break as the 25-year-old all but secured the green jersey for a fourth consecutive year despite having been the reason why ASO tweaked the points classification rules this year.

And yet... his tactical shortcomings and propensity to self-sabotage his efforts means that Sagan - while clearly the strongest all-rounder on the race - has just as many wins to his name as Bryan Coquard. You can bet your house that Sagan would swap all of those 16 second places for one victory on the Champs-Elysees this Sunday.

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Nothing should be read into Sagan's ubiquity off the front of the race with regards to his team leader's form for the Slovakian sensation was always going to be something of a lone ranger for Tinkoff-Saxo in this year's Tour.

But the presence of Rafal Majka and Mick Rogers - two key mountain lieutenants for Alberto Contador - on the attack in the Pyrenees and Massif Central respectively only fuelled the flames of concern surrounding the Spaniard's poor form.

No one can begrudge Majka his win at Cauterets - especially coming as it did so soon after Tinkoff-Saxo veteran Ivan Basso left the Tour for successful treatment for testicular cancer.

And yet all the talk on the rest day in Pau was of Contador getting to Paris to meet Basso in yellow - an idea seemingly forgotten one night later when Majka rode up the road. The Polish climber was let off the leash last year after Contador withdrew, winning two mountain stages en route to winking his way to the polka dot jersey.

To see him attack when Contador was still in the race was rather telling: Tinkoff-Saxo were clearly looking at a Plan B as early as stage 11.

That Rogers - another rider to save Tinkoff's Tour last year with a post-Contador stage win - joined Sagan in the break Valence in stage 15 was further evidence that we cannot expect Contador to reduce his deficit of 4:23 on Froome in the third and final week of the race.

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Well down on GC, Joaquim Rodriguez has been able to pick and choose his moments in this year's Tour - a tactic that has now yielded him two stage wins. His latest came in apocalyptic conditions at Plateau de Beille as rain and hail pounded down on the peloton to give the riders a brief respite from the sweltering heat that had dogged the race for the past week.

Rodriguez has 10 top-tens in Grand Tours but has not been a proper GC contender in the Tour since 2013. The turning point of the Spaniard's career was 2012 where, looking back, he had wonderful chances to win both the Giro and the Vuelta.

Leading until the penultimate day's time trial, Rodriguez was denied by Canada's Ryder Hesjedal in Italy before losing the red jersey to Contador in Spain on a seemingly innocuous transitional stage. Both setbacks were capped one year later by his last-gasp loss to Rui Costa in the world championships at Florence.

Rodriguez's own assertion that it is his destiny never to win a Grand Tour certainly looks true - and should that be the case he would be the best all-rounder of this era capable of winning a major three week race who has not stood atop the podium in Madrid, Paris or Rome.

Of his generation of explosive Spanish riders he has always enjoyed more popularity than the likes of Contador and Valverde, but for all his stage wins he has never been as clinical or consistent as them throughout a major race.

Perhaps one of the most powerful images of the second week of the race was an assertive and daring Steve Cummings throwing caution to the wind and taking a daring line around the final corners ahead of the home straight in Mende - while Frenchmen Thibaut Pinot and Romain Bardet looked at each other in disbelief.

It was symptomatic of their disappointing Tours that the two French tyros should contrive to lose a guilt-edge opportunity to regain a little pride - and do so by the sword of an unfeted British domestique.

Take nothing away from the excellent Cummings - but Pinot and Bardet were being touted as possible winners of this race a fortnight ago, and here they were fighting for scraps yet losing out to a far hungrier and more decisive predator.

If we had a euro for every time Bryan Coquard told reporters he felt he "could have won" a sprint or for every time Pinot dropped his head on the cobbles or in the Pyrenees, we'd have enough money to buy, say, 10 copies of L'Équipe inside which we could read about Arnaud Démare complaining about how unfair this Tour has been for the sprinters, oblivious of the irony of uttering such things on a day André Greipel has notched his third win of the race...

Warren Barguil has had a largely excellent and encouraging maiden Tour - and will have Geraint Thomas only partially to thank if he manages to finishes in the top ten. But the young Breton has been an exception for the host nation, whose top riders - bar Tony Gallopin, perhaps - have simply not turned up.

Pinot's third-place finish last year seemed to confirm that he had turned a page on the psychological problems that had dogged him since finishing tenth in his debut Tour in 2012. But this past fortnight seems to prove otherwise.

Until the French believe they can win - whether it's a sprint, a mountain stage or the whole shebang - they will continue to underperform.

The spunky Coquard seems to have that ballsy belief - but if only it were backed up by sheer thrust and ability, and if only he could stop seeking excuses in even the most minor of kerfuffles. Bryan - if you can't deal with the shoulders of Sagan in a sprint then you're never going to be the one that keeps his second-place run going.