CHRIS FROOME finally enjoyed an easy ride on the final day of the Tour de France yesterday as he joined the ranks of cycling’s greats.

The 2013 champion has endured a gruelling three weeks - and not just as a result of competing in cycling’s greatest road race.

How many other British sporting heroes can say they have been jeered, spat at, accused of cheating and even drenched in urine? His Team Sky team-mates were subjected to the same disgraceful treatment and one was even punched.

French television rolled out a so-called expert who analysed Froome’s performance and said it was higher than any non-doping rider had ever achieved; a blatant attempt to sully his achievements with the unspoken accusation that all was not as it appeared. Later, the same commentator made an even more bizarre suggestion – that Kenyan-born Froome had a hidden electric motor in his bike which helped him power away from the peloton.

Somehow 30-year-old Froome managed to rise above it all. Throughout the race he maintained an unfailingly polite manner, despite interlocutors who were often rude and aggressive, and batted away critics who openly accused him of taking performance enhancing drugs.

Sadly, all Tour winners have to accept that the suspicion of cheating is now part of the post-Lance Armstrong era.

But if Chris Froome was cheating he must have been supremely confident that he would not be caught. He is the only rider to publically agree to round-the-clock in-competition random drugs testing.

In years to come people will look back on this time as a golden era in British competition cycling. We prefer to celebrate Chris Froome’s stunning achievement and Team Sky’s successes, which have encouraged thousands of ordinary people to take up the sport, than rake over ancient history.

As sporting ambassadors go, cycling could not ask for a better example than Chris Froome.