The Tour de France stages Friday and Saturday went so perfectly for Lance Armstrong and team USPS that they were almost non-events. It’s one thing to watch a team eviscerate its rivals with a tactically flawless ride on one stage. But to see the same technique applied two days in a row, with the same textbook precision, is uncanny. It also makes a statement: Lance and the Blue Train are the deadliest combination at this year’s Tour.

Unlike previous years, Lance may not be the strongest rider in this year’s field. It's not a repeat of 2001 or 2002, when he was clearly on a different level. With the way the Blue Train is riding, we might never get to see just how Lance measures up to his rivals. By the time they hit Wednesday’s mountain time trial on l’Alpe d’Huez, Lance’s challengers may be so physically broken and demoralized they may not have the spirit to give 100 percent.

The 12th stage Friday was the first race day in the mountains, our first chance to see who had the horsepower to challenge Armstrong. Racing on the flat gives competitors plenty of opportunity to lean on their teammates for support — a sagging rider can rely on his squad for a steady draft, using 50 percent less energy than racers who are forced to break their own wind. But in the mountains, there’s nothing your team can do to shield you from gravity’s pull. On the climbs it’s pure power-to-weight, the cycling equivalent of bat speed or punching power, and it’s every man for himself. Usually.

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On Friday, we expected attacks from challengers like T-Mobile’s Jan Ullrich, or Phonak’s Tyler Hamilton. Typically, teams shelter their leaders and work to position them at the head of the field once the race hits the foothills, leaving the leaders to slug it out on the climb in a pure power contest. But what happened, instead, was a grinding assault on Lance’s challengers by Postal’s Blue Train.

Before the peloton hit the base of the Col d’Aspin, the first of Friday’s significant climbs, the Blue Train went to the front and set a furious, relentless pace. When the pack’s going that fast, you simply cannot get your own leader to the head of the field, much less up the road. Lance’s foot-soldiers did their thankless jobs perfectly, burning themselves out one by one to sustain a leg-breaking pace up the mountain that destroyed rival domestiques, leaving Lance’s challengers with scant team support.

When Lance was dropped on the scary, wet descent of the Aspin, the Blue Train was there to pace him back to the lead group. And then they worked themselves to exhaustion, one by one, up the 6.8-percent grade to the finishing town of La Mongie. Lance sat pretty in the draft of super-climber Jose Azevedo, his designated pacemaker and final lead-out man. Jan Ullrich, Tyler Hamilton, Iban Mayo and his other rivals, normally stars in the mountains, sat in the field and suffered.

By the time Azevedo handed the lead over to Lance with just 5km to go, the only man who could stay with the Texan was CSC-Tiscali’s Ivan Basso, who held on to win with Lance on his wheel.

Saturday’s Stage 13 was an even tougher day, with seven categorized climbs strung out over the 127.7-mile course, with the hardest climb reserved for the mountaintop finish at Plateau-de-Beille. Otherwise, it was a repeat of Friday’s perfect run by the Blue Train. The peloton was shattered, strung out with minutes-long gaps, and by the time they hit the final climb Lance’s rivals were cooked, grimly grinding their way uphill in pure survival mode. Azevedo led Armstrong out once again, and Ivan Basso was the only man to stay with Lance, who stormed to take the stage win.

The biggest disappointment Saturday was Hamilton’s withdrawal from the race, about 48 miles into the stage. He had injured his back in the mass pile-up July 9, making breathing painfully difficult, and he couldn’t get up out of the saddle on the climbs. Personally, I think Hamilton was Lance’s strongest challenger. Physically, his Phonak team was the strongest in the Tour—they finished just over a minute behind Postal in the team time trial, but did so with four flat tires. Given a perfect run, they would have wasted the Blue Train. And Tyler is normally a star in the mountains. This is the guy who won a grueling mountain stage last year, riding with a broken collarbone.

Ivan Basso is the challenger of the moment. He may be Armstrong’s equal in the mountains, but he’s no time trial specialist. His climbing prowess may see him through Wednesday’s race against the clock, but on Stage 19’s relatively flat time trial course he’s almost sure to lose time to Lance. His CSC team is tactically powerful and physically capable, but unless the Posties commit a strategic error of titanic proportions and Lance has a bad day, he’ll be effectively neutralized in the mountains.

Ullrich is minutes behind, and seems to be completely used up physically and mentally. Iban Mayo almost abandoned Saturday, finishing almost 38 minutes behind in 115^th place, certainly out of contention. Andreas Klöden, Ullrich’s teammate, seems like a shoo-in for the podium, but probably doesn’t have the mustard to challenge Lance.

To get to Armstrong, his rivals will have to get through the Blue Train first. And the way the Blue Train is moving this year, it doesn’t look like anyone will get the chance to challenge.

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