After hiding in the depths of the Tour de France peloton all the way from Dublin to the south of France, apart from a brief appearance to win Saturday's time-trial, the real Jan Ullrich appeared yesterday, five miles before the Col de Peyresourde, the last climb before the descent to the finish at Luchon.
Ullrich rode the whole stage, the toughest so far, in the style of Miguel Indurain, the five-time Tour winner whose record many expect him to equal.
First he tackled the Aubisque and Tourmalet passes safely ensconced among his pink-clad domestiques from the Deutsche Telekom team, observing the opposition.
There was a brief hiccup towards the end on the lesser ascent of the Col d'Aspin, when Laurent Jalabert set French hearts racing with a spectacular though short-lived assault and for a moment Ullrich looked uncertain how to respond. Encouraged, Jalabert continued to make his presence felt as the road plunged downhill.
The French champion was to pay for his temerity on the Peyresourde. Five miles from the summit, a deep defile between two green, mist-enveloped peaks, Ullrich put the pressure on and Jalabert cracked immediately, together with the Basque Abraham Olano, who finished fourth last year.
In regaining the yellow jersey, Ullrich bore little resemblance to the bloated figure who started the season a stone overweight. One of Indurain's hallmarks was the way he would never hesitate to crush an opponent on seeing a weakness. Ullrich seemed to have been taking lessons from the master.
With the descent into this elegant spa town over, Ullrich's gaps were not definitive - 59 seconds in front of Olano and 1 minute 14 seconds ahead of Jalabert - but first blood had gone to the German: metaphorically, in that the verdict of the first mountain stage is rarely reversed, and literally, in that Jalabert and Olano had crashed during the stage, although with little sign of serious injury.
They were not the only ones to fall. The clouds had turned the road, in places, into a skatingrink, upon which the riders descended at 50 m.p.h. in almost zero visibility. One of many minor pile-ups on the Aubisque descent did for the Italian Francesco Casagrande, last year's sixth finisher. He was one of 17 abandons; the Tour field was literally decimated.
An elite nine riders survived Ullrich's first assault of this Tour, and they were mainly mountain men such as the Spaniards Fernando Escartin and Jose-Maria Jimenez. The American Bobby Julich was the only rider who had shown well in Saturday's time-trial to remain in Ullrich's wheelmarks; he lies a surprise second to the German.
Any doubts that Marco Pantani had lost motivation since winning the Tour of Italy were removed when the little climber from Rimini staged a characteristic attack a mile from the Peyresourde summit, with his piratical headscarf flying in the wind above his goatee beard and earring. As usual, not one of the lead group could hold his pace.
Pantani could sense that, a little higher up the mountainside, fresh-faced Frenchman Cedric Vasseur and the grizzled Italian Rodolfo Massi were weakening after leading over the three previous passes. He duly gobbled up Vasseur, but Massi hung on, just, to deny Pantani his fourth Tour stage win.
Pantani will be the favourite to win today's short, vicious stage, which includes a mountain-top finish at Plateau de Beille. However, if Ullrich's show of strength yesterday is anything to go by, Pantani will have to attack on every mountain between here and Paris to concern the German.
