TREBLE WITHOUT APPLAUSE All-time great deserves more credit

He is also a latecomer to public adoration, an elite achiever who has not yet been afforded the recognition he deserves, so here’s the deal.

Win a gold medal for Team GB’s blazing saddles at the Rio Olympics next month and surely there will be a knighthood in the post. But make no mistake, Froome could not have nailed Britain’s fourth win in five years at the most gruelling endurance test of them all without his powerful Team Sky minders.

Wout Poels and Geraint Thomas have both been immense over the last three weeks. Froome is the champion again because he has the strongest back-up cast.

Patched up after his crash on Friday, he broke into a broad smile on the home stretch – grinning in the rain, and who can blame him?

“It feels like I’ve been riding a rollercoaster for the last three weeks,” he said. “All the emotions coming down the final descent, the suspense of trying not to put a foot wrong and making sure I got down safely was incredible.

“Coming into that last kilometre with my team-mates around me, that feeling of happiness and relief, just washed over me. I think we were by far the strongest line- up in this year’s race and those guys have left nothing out on the road.”

Twelve months ago, fans were spitting at Froome and tipping bodily waste over him because they couldn’t s t and his r uthless efficiency.

Hawks were desperate to believe he would be unmasked as a doping cheat – although there was not a shred of evidence to back up the whispering campaign against him. Not that Froome, 31, was ever going to have it easy on the last, brutal stage in the Alps.

Somebody in the Team Sky department of number- crunchers worked out there more than two- and- a- half miles of pure climbing on the 91-mile slog from Megeve – the equivalent of scaling Big Ben 39 times.

Froome heads for Paris 4min 5sec ahead of nearest challenger Romain Bardet of France, with Nairo Quintana 16sec further back.

Spain’s Jon Izaguirre won stage 20 with a brave, late breakaway in the teeming rain, but who cares? We’ve got Va Va Froome. Britain’s Adam Yates, 23, is set to miss out on the podium in Paris by just 21sec – but his consolation will be the White Jersey for best young rider.