London – Four-time Tour de France winner Chris Froome said surgery to remove a metal plaque and six screws from his hip went perfectly as his bid to regain full fitness overcame another hurdle on Friday.

Froome fractured a thigh, elbow and vertebrae in a high speed crash during June’s Criterium du Dauphine stage race.

But his burning ambition to win a fifth Tour de France title next July and a possible participation at the Tokyo Olympics road race just a week after the end of the Tour are inspiring his recovery.

Froome’s hip and thigh bones had already healed but he was suffering discomfort in what he described as his ‘soft tissue’ due to the six screws in a metal plaque that was removed from his right hip in a Saint-Etienne hospital on Friday.

“Less some hardware from my hip and elbow. Feeling groggy but all went perfectly,” Froome said on Twitter above a picture of him giving a thumbs up.

In an interview with AFP in Tokyo in late October Froome insisted the Tour was his main driving force but he also expressed great excitement for next July’s Olympics.

“The Tour de France is the driving force, the big prize for me is to try and get back to the Tour de France, it’s still too early to say if it’s doable. I’m going to do everything I can to get back to where I left off,” he said.