Chris Froome has been cleared of the parasitic disease bilharzia, a condition that he has been suffering from for the past four years.

The Team Sky rider, who this year won the Tour de France, has expressed relief that his treatment is finally at an end.

"At last I am free of the debilitating disease bilharzia," Reuters quotes the 28-year-old as saying. "I had a test when I went back to Kenya recently and it is the first time it has come back negative since the diagnosis.

"That is fantastic news for me. I'm not going to have to worry about that any more. That should be it gone now.

"I have been going back every six months for the past two years and returning positive results. When I was first diagnosed they said it had been in my system for at least two years, but it could have been there even longer, five or six years possibly."

Bilharzia, otherwise known as Schistosomiasis, is caused by parasites living in fresh water.