Olympic heptathlon champion Jess Ennis. Agence France-Presse / Getty Images

It's all sporting glory in England right now. On our wee isle of historic underperformance, we are currently surveying the globe wondering what major title we are going to annex next. Wimbledon? Tick. The Tour de France? In the bag. The way things are going, give us four days and the Open will be ours too.

C'mon world, where's the competition gone? We're supposed to have an inferiority complex. But suddenly we're so good, it's provoking an identity crisis. Who are we and why are we winning?

From where I am sitting, a sweltering press room in the foothills of the picture-postcard Alps which Chris Froome will soon breeze past regally, it all looks fairly splendid until one of Froome's legion of media inquisitors asks him: "Are you proud to be British?" It happens every day and I bury my head as he answers, every day, "100%" in an African accent.

Froome was born in Kenya, educated in South Africa and used to ride for Kenya. Outside of a few over-nighters during last summer's Olympics, no one is really sure whether he's ever done a week in a British bed. But while he is winning, we'll overlook that. He is currently our "Froomie", Sir Bradley Wiggins's little bro.

Chris Froome is leading the Tour de France. Getty Images

Watch us if he messes up, though. Suddenly he'll be Kenyan through and through.

Andy Murray? For years, we (the non-Scots) viewed him with suspicion. He was unshaven, grumbly, a bit monotonous and—the greatest sin—didn't win Wimbledon. So we dismissed him as one of them, one of the Scots.

We were like that with Greg Rusedski. When he was crap, he was Canuck. When he nearly won the U.S. Open, he bled the colors of the Union Jack.

When Murray did win Wimbledon, he was the ultimate Brit. Until the next day when he publicly discussed Scottish independence. That was plain insensitive (unless you are a Scot—they could smirk grandly). We'd waited 77 years for that Wimbledon title. Suddenly we were left helpless, insecure, wondering: is he now going to take it away from us?

If it's not already obvious, our xenophobia is index-linked to levels of success. But just to clarify, here is your cut-out-and-keep guide for categorizing athletes with British connections:

Quintessential English summer: Olympic heptathlon champion Jess Ennis, former tennis pro Tim Henman, England soccer captain Steven Gerrard, rugby star Jonny Wilkinson, cucumber sandwiches, retired swimmer Rebecca Adlington, three-time gold medalist Seb Coe.

Beefeater British: A broader subset that encompasses all Celts, Manchester United's Ryan Giggs, Tottenham's Gareth Bale in particular, Scottish football managers (there are no decent Scottish players, just outstanding managers), Welsh male voice choirs, Murray, Olympic cyclist Chris Hoy (thank God we got the medals out of him before Scottish independence became a possibility).

The Brit Mix: This is what we are supposed to be about, multicultural and proud: Olympic champion Mo Farah (Somali born), Manchester United's Rio Ferdinand, former England and Liverpool star John Barnes, 2004 gold-medal runner Kelly Holmes, former boxer Frank Bruno (all of Caribbean parentage), Freddie Mercury, the Notting Hill Carnival.

Northern Ireland's Rory McIlroy. Action Images/Zuma Press

The Ulster Brits: Rory McIlroy, Graeme McDowell. These guys are from Northern Ireland, have always played their golf for the whole of Ireland, but have to decide for the next Olympics, whether they play for Team GB or the Republic of Ireland. It is their decision and a painfully sensitive one. Do they love us more than them? We want McIlroy's love. McDowell we can live without. That's how fickle we are.

Convenient Brits: This is where we really struggle—with athletes we want in British colors when they play well and who we are not so sure about when they don't. Rusedski, Froome, Lennox Lewis, Kevin Pietersen and Jonathan Trott (both South Africans in the England cricket team), Manu Tuilagi and Brad Barritt (England rugby players from Samoa and South Africa).

The Florida problem: This is awkward. If a Brit does win the Open Championship this week, you can bet the Claret Jug will be on the first plane back to his home in Florida. Justin Rose, our U.S. Open winner, is a South Africa-born Brit who lives in Lake Nona. When the plane left London for the last Ryder Cup, in Chicago, there was only one European on it; the rest of them were already there. We'll try to keep this quiet, though. It's not like they are really Yanks. They only live there and educate their children there. And celebrate Thanksgiving. And Ian Poulter tweets more about the Orlando Magic now than he does Arsenal. Actually, this is a breakaway movement.

Plastic Brits: There are few greater penances for athletes than having our Daily Mail question whether you are British enough. Last year, Tiffany Porter, the British hurdler born, raised and educated in Michigan, was asked in a news conference if she could recite the words of "God Save The Queen." She said she did—but refused to prove it. Lordy did that cause a to-do. In some quarters, she received sympathy, though the same could not be said for Olga Butkevych, the Ukrainian in our Olympic wrestling team. Mind you, had she gone beyond the first round maybe that would have been different too.

The point is this. In the U.S., you've got your melting pot and the American Dream you bang on about. And we have a melting pot too, only the ingredients don't always melt so well.

A point of fact on Murray: he hasn't said he is pro-independence, he has merely said he is thinking about it. But we can't have him going all separatist on us. Not now that he has finally melted in so well.