Chris Froome wins Tour de France 2015: Doping claims dampen the mood as Brit triumphs

Team Sky crossed the finish line seven abreast in a show of solidarity

Team Sky's Chris Froome celebrates winning the 2015 Tour de France (PA)

The skies of northern France spat on Chris Froome, but they spat, at least, on all cyclists and spectators alike.

After an epic Tour de France scarred by innuendo and splattered in spit and urine, Froome became, as expected, the first Briton to win the world’s greatest cycle race twice.

In a gesture evidently aimed at the critics, Christopher Froome and seven other Sky team riders crossed the final-stage finish line arm-in-arm and line abreast – like circus performers.

The British rider’s coronation on the Champs Elysées was hardly the joyous occasion which marked the first ever British win, by Bradley Wiggins in 2012 – or even Froome’s first win in 2013.

That was partly the fault of the rain; partly the fault of the suspicions of doping raised, without a shred of evidence, by some – certainly not all – sections of the French media.

The urine and spit hurled at Froome by a few angry spectators on earlier stages of the three-week race were happily absent. There were scattered boos, whistles and catcalls for Froome and his leader’s yellow jersey during the 10 final circuits of the Etoile, the Champs Elysées and the Place de la Concorde (surely the most grandiose velodrome in the world).

One apparently Dutch spectator was heard to shout: “Hey, yellow shirt, got any good stuff for me?”

Mostly, however, there was polite applause for Froome. Many French spectators came out of the crowd in the suburbs to stand with their thumbs up as he passed. Scores of British fans braved the rain to wave their union flags.

Froome’s only difficulty was when a plastic carrier bag became entangled in his rear wheel on the Champs Elysées. He rapidly changed bikes and caught up with the pack.

In brief comments after his victory, Froome said: “After all the efforts made in training camps and all the time spent away from my wife, [to win] is unreal. Completely unreal.”

The final 109km stage from the western Paris suburbs mostly resembled a Sunday afternoon outing by an over-70s cycle team. Taking no chances on the greasy roads, the 160 riders arrived on the Champs Elysées 25 minutes behind schedule.

All the hard work had been done in the Alps and, above all, in the Pyrenees. And indeed it was Froome’s outstanding performance on the steep slopes of the Pyrenees on 14 July – when he crushed all his rivals to arrive at Pierre Saint-Martin four minutes ahead of the main pack – that started the talk of doping.

Froome and the Sky team have angrily dismissed the allegations, while accepting that the sorry saga of Lance Armstrong makes such speculation inevitable.

The American seven times tour winner, who screamed his innocence throughout his career, finally admitted in 2013 that he had been taking performance-enhancing substances all along.

“Froome is a great champion but Armstrong has ruined everything,” said one French cycle fan, Jean-Francois Jaquesmain, 68, who had come 250 miles from Lorraine to watch the final stage. “If the French don’t like him, it’s because they are scared of being cheated and disappointed all over again. Many of us supported Armstrong. Now we see Froome riding just as well as he did in the Pyrenees and we are afraid to say ‘Bravo, what a great rider’.”

A British cycling fan, Matthew Greks, 39, said it was too simple to accuse the French public and press of being anti-British. “They took Bradley Wiggins to their heart. When Froome won in 2013, L’Equipe (the daily French sports paper) had a banner headline in English, ‘What a champion’.”

Mr Greks added: “Many British cycling fans don’t like him [Froome] much either. Compared to Wiggins, he is very mechanical in his public pronouncements.”