Chris Froome heads for the horizon after victory in 'mental warfare'

THEY can erect another monument for a British hero high on the bare, scorched slopes of Mont Ventoux, but this one will tell not of death but glory.

THEY can erect another monument for a British hero high on the bare, scorched slopes of Mont Ventoux, but this one will tell not of death but glory.

It can tell of the day that Chris Froome ascended among the greats of cycling with what history will record as the single-most remarkable ride by a Briton across 100 editions of the Tour de France.

"This was where the 2013 Tour was won": they can start carving the plaque already at the point about 1.3 kilometres from the summit, where Froome accelerated away from Nairo Quintana, the last man clinging desperately to his wheel.

How poignant that Froome's final surge came just yards from the shrine to Tom Simpson - although it was somehow typical of this undemonstrative, almost unknowable athlete that it had not occurred to him that he was passing the sombre spot where the Englishman, a former world champion, collapsed during the Tour 46 years and one day ago, falling off his bike and dying from a lethal combination of dehydration, amphetamines and a slug of brandy.

"I didn't know," Froome said. "That was coincidental."

And, to be fair, his brain had had enough to compute on an epic day when the Tour covered 221 kilometres just to reach the bottom of the "Beast of Provence".

From there, it was another 21 kilometres of suffering - "mental warfare", Froome called it - in which the man in the yellow jersey dug so deep into his physical capacities that, for the first time in his career, he needed to take oxygen at the summit.

As long as oxygen is all he needs.

Froome will be braced for a fresh barrage of sceptical questions about what propels a performance that destroyed the field and left his main rival, Alberto Contador, floundering on the hillside. The better Froome does - and this was sensational - the harder the accusations come.

"We have a great performance, I jump for joy, and ten minutes later I guarantee I will be answering these allegations and questions about doping for the next few days," Sir Dave Brailsford, Team Sky's principal, said.

The shorthand answer from Brailsford is that Froome is an "outlier", a freakish physiological specimen benefiting from the best scientific training regime in the sport. Supported, too, by team-mates who have been lacking at times in this Tour but responded heroically. Through the trees on the lower slopes of Ventoux, Pete Kennaugh, Sky's rising star, rode himself almost to collapse in helping to chase down Quintana, the escapee.

Froome then had to survive the inhalation of smoke from a flare held by one of the hundreds of thousands of raucous fans packed along almost every yard of the long, winding road.

Then Richie Porte took over, decimating a thinning field. With Quintana ahead and only Contador stalking the Sky pair, Froome whispered something in Porte's ear with 7.6 kilometres to go.

It was a signal for something. Seconds later, Contador discovered exactly what. With a surge that drew gasps all along on the mountainside, Froome launched himself forward, those long legs thrashing the pedals up and down, eating up the road and spitting out Contador.

"As Richie got to the end of his turn," Froome said, "I thought, 'Now is the time. I don't want to start sitting up and playing games. Now is the time to get rid of Alberto.'"

With that Tour-defining burst Froome was away. He soon caught Quintana and formed an alliance that ended by the Simpson memorial when the Briton rode off. Froome gained an astonishing 29 seconds on the Colombian by the finish line.

It was a staggering display of superiority that extended Froome's overall lead to 4min 14sec and his advantage on Contador to 4:25.

But this was far more than a matter of minutes and seconds. It was an assertion of such utter dominance that this race is now a fight for second place.

It hardly seems to matter now that Sky have been beset by injuries and inconsistent form. "You think we've got a s*** team," Brailsford said, rather chippily.

They have Froome, who on Bastille Day, in the 100th Tour, on cycling's most revered mountain, wearing the yellow jersey, destroyed his rivals so comprehensively that his climb will be talked about for decades to come.

"This has to be the biggest win of my career," Froome said. "It's such an emotional win for me."

He did not sound emotional, but that is the way of this inscrutable phenomenon. When dozens of fans screamed his name, he looked a little bashful.

The attention will escalate now that he is champion-elect, even in the eyes of his closest rivals.

They can do nothing to stop him; not yesterday and perhaps not for years to come.

The Times