Frankie Andreu -- 2000

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One of the team's most selfless performers and hardest workers, Andreu begins his 12th season as a professional in 2000 and his third with the USPS team. Andreu will once again be asked to put his experience to work acting as road captain of the team. A solid performer in World Cup events and in the Grand Tours, Andreu was a key force in last year's Tour de France. He finished his eighth consecutive Tour while supporting teammate Lance Armstrong's victory. Last year, Andreu went from opportunist to tactician in defense of the maillot jaune. His reliability on the flats and in the mountains was an integral part of the team's success. Andreu's chance for individual victory came later in the year during the 15th stage of the Tour of Spain. He and eight others were involved in a breakaway of over 170 kilometers, building an insurmountable lead over the peloton heading into the finish in Valencia. With a lead of over 12 minutes at the finish line, Andreu came across a close second to Viatcheslav Ekimov, who has re-joined the USPS this year. In the World Cup, Andreu turned in three top-40 performances, including a solid 21st overall at Paris-Roubaix. After helping secure teammate George Hincapie's position toward the front of the race, Andreu finished in a 13-rider group including Tour of Flanders winner Peter Van Petegem. Last season, he won two races, taking the CoreStates Invitational and a stage of the Tour of Luxembourg. A five-time National Champion on the track in the late 1980s, Andreu competed in the 1988 and 1996 Olympic Games, finishing fourth in the road race at the '96 Games in Atlanta. He also is the author of a popular weekly column delving into the life of a pro cyclist, now available on team sponsor bike.com's website.

Paris-Nice
March 5-12
stage:

3/5 - 7.9km - Individual TT, Paris - Bois de Vincennes
3/6 - 201km - Sens - Nevers
3/7 - 203.7km - Nevers - Belleville ---- (currently third overall @ :12)
3/8 - 178km - Trevoux - Saint Etienne
3/9 - 194.2km Berre L'Etang - Sisteron
3/10 - 196.2km Sisteron - Villeneuve - Loubet ---- (fourth @:12)
3/11 - 10km Nice - Col D'Eze
3/12 - 160.1km Nice - Nice ---- (overall 8th @ 1:17)

Paris-Roubaix 273km
April 9, 2000

20 - Frankie Andreu - 3:15

Frankie leading Johan Museeuw (photo by graham watson)

Vuelta Ciclista a Aragon - cat. 2.2
April 12-16, 2000
Stage:

4/12: Bronchales - Alcañiz 174 km ..... 110 @ :34
4/13: Fraga - Celer 140 km
4/14: Benasque - Sabiñánigo 159 km ..... 87 (86 overall)
4/15: Jaca - Borja 186 km ..... 100
4/16: Magallón - Zaragoza 135 km

The Detroit News

Frankie revs up for the Olympics
By Joanne C. Gerstner / The Detroit News

Frankie Andreu is used to living a double life.

Andreu, a two-time Olympic and eight-time Tour de France cyclist, splits his time between homes in Dearborn and Nice, France. But there's only one place Andreu, wife Betsy, and their infant son Frankie really call home. "I'm always going to be a guy from Dearborn," said Andreu, 33. "No matter if I'm in the Tour de France or at the Olympics, that's who I am. I always root for the Wings and check out Michigan football.

"It's nice to be home again."

Andreu is training for the U.S. Olympic road trials, which will be May 20 on a 136-mile course in Jackson, Miss. The U.S. team has five slots for the 2000 Olympics. The winner of the trials gets one, Lance Armstrong is virtually guaranteed one for being the top U.S. cyclist, and the other three riders will be selected by U.S. cycling July 15. Andreu is training locally for the trials, riding by himself around five hours and 100 miles per day in Kensington Metropark.

He won the 1996 U.S. Olympic trials and was fourth in the Olympic road race in Atlanta. "I think I can win the trial again," Andreu said. "The only downfall playing against me is the course. It's pretty flat, which is a detriment. Too many guys can hang around. "The harder the course, the more beneficial it is to the stronger, technical riders." Andreu's first Olympics was Seoul, Korea in 1988, where he finished eighth. "It's a priority to go back to the Olympics," Andreu said. "Cycling is my life and my job. Making the Olympic team is an achievement that forever makes a special kind of status on your life resume."

Andreu's father, Frank, is equally impacted by his son's Olympic experiences. "It's unbelievable. You're so proud of him and that he's representing your country," Frank said. "It's something so special that you do whatever you have to get there and be with him."

Andreu's bi-continental life has shown him the difference between American and European attitudes toward cycling. He lives in Nice during the European season, and returns to Dearborn for the North American races and to rest. "If an American wins the gold, everybody's happy," Andreu said. "It's a shame that Americans winning second or third -- which is still a huge accomplishment -- definitely get overlooked. "It takes effort and courage to finish that high up. Europeans notice that."

Andreu sees U.S. attitudes toward cycling warming a bit, especially in the wake of Armstrong's 1999 Tour de France win. Andreu captained the U.S. Postal Service team (which Armstrong rides for), helping develop the daily team strategies used to keep Armstrong in the lead. In his book, "It's Not About The Bike," Armstrong writes: "I wore the yellow jersey. But I figured maybe the only thing that belongs to me is the zipper. A small piece of it. My teammates deserve the rest -- the sleeves, the front, and the back of it."

Andreu's wife Betsy agreed. "Frankie worked so hard in the Tour to help Lance," said Betsy, a Dearborn Heights native. "But Frankie won't tell you that. He's so low-key he doesn't want to be recognized. "Don't let that fool you. He loves to compete and ride, and we'd love to go back to the Olympics. He's going to be ready for the trial."

Detroit Free Press
May 19, 2000

BY JO-ANN BARNAS
FREE PRESS SPORTS WRITER
All his wife knew, really, was that he was somewhere in Michigan. A wave good-bye and a "See ya 'round 4:30," and Frankie Andreu was off, cycling out of Dearborn, heading for Hines Drive, pedaling toward who knows where.
"I don't know the name of the cities," Andreu said. "I just go."
For more than a decade, Andreu has quietly but masterfully paved his way as one of the country's premier pro cyclists, a king of the road.
At 33, he most likely will compete in his ninth consecutive Tour de France this summer, a record for an American cyclist. That's more than three-time Tour champion Greg LeMond or Lance Armstrong, Andreu's U.S. Postal Service teammate who captured the 2,406-mile, 21-stage race last year. It was the first time an American-based team had fielded the winning rider.
Saturday, Andreu will attempt to qualify for the Olympics for the third time when he competes in the U.S. trials for road cycling in Jackson, Miss. It was an event he won in 1996 before finishing fourth at the Atlanta Olympics.
"It's a remarkable feat to do what he's done," said Jim Ochowicz, who will coach the U.S. Olympic men's road team at Sydney, Australia. "Any pro athlete who performs at such a high level year after year, it says something about the athlete."
Andreu's wife, Betsy, once calculated that her husband averages 25,000 miles a year training and racing on his bike. The biggest chunks are logged right here in Michigan and around Nice, France, where the Andreus spend half the year during the European racing season.
On a recent weekday morning, Andreu left Betsy and their year-old son to go on a 130-mile ride. Asked exactly where he went that day, Andreu shrugged and retrieved his Michigan road map.
Using his index finger as a guide, Andreu traced the path that began, not surprisingly, in his driveway in Dearborn. Then, with the cadence of a short-order cook, he dictated his route: "Start here ...to Hines to Seven Mile to North Territorial to M-52 to Stockbridge, then a small town, through Gregory, which looped back into Brighton, then cut through Kensington and back
home."
He shrugged again.
"Once I get past near the end of Seven Mile, it's fantastic -- really good riding," Andreu said.
Asked what his favorite fuel food is for a seven-hour ride -- which includes several stops for water -- Andreu glanced over at Betsy and smiled.
Apples or raisins, right?
Wrong.
Try single-wrapped packages of Little Debbie fudge brownies and oatmeal cream pies.
"That's disgusting," Betsy said.
"It helps me home," Frankie replied.
Andreu, who graduated from Dearborn High in 1984, has been riding for almost as long as he can remember. His parents, who live around the corner, encouraged Frankie and his two younger sisters in the sport when he was about 10.
His father, Francisco Andreu, who goes by Frank, was born in Havana and came to the United States in 1961. After moving to Dearborn in the mid-1960s, he joined a local bike club.
"We started biking because it was a family affair," Frank Andreu said.
Looking for the safest route, the father mapped out a two-mile loop in a subdivision near St. Anselm Church. That was where Frankie and sisters Celeste and Allie raced each other. Often, Frank and his wife, Marilyn, timed the Saturday rides from the front seat of their car.
"My sisters were the best out of everybody -- they killed me," Frankie said. "They ended up being national age-group champions. They'd beat up on the boys all the time, including me."
That year, Frankie and his father entered a 100-mile tour in Macomb County. It was a no-pressure affair, but Frankie's eyes lit up when he saw that the youngest finisher of the tour won a trophy.
"That was the only thing that got him going," his father said. "I have a picture of us from that day. Our faces are as red as tomatoes. I kept encouraging him, and he brought home that trophy."
Frankie recalled: "I was so tired and crying, but I wanted that trophy so bad."
Ochowicz, who is married to former Detroiter Sheila Young, a speedskating gold medalist in the 1976 Winter Olympics, remembers seeing Andreu for the first time in the mid-1980s.
By then, Ochowicz, a two-time cycling Olympian, was managing and coaching the prestigious 7-Eleven cycling team, which he founded in 1981. That team was the first American professional cycling team to participate in the Tour de France, in 1986. He then served as founder, general manager and coach for the Motorola team in 1991-96.
"Like any other pro sports team, we were on the lookout and scouting for new talent that would be energy for us," Ochowicz said. "Frankie was one of those people we had an eye on. His interests were similar to our interests. But at that time, he was more of a track rider than a road rider. But the transition was easy for him."
Turning pro and joining the 7-Eleven team set into motion a career that Andreu never thought could last as long as it has.
"After a couple of years, I found I could make a living racing a bike," Andreu said. "Until then, my dad was my coach, mechanic and sponsor."
Andreu rode in his first Tour de France in 1992, and he'll never forget the feeling of just "hanging on for dear life. Just the suffering," Andreu said.
"I'll always be so grateful to one of my teammates who looked after me, Sean Yates.
"He got me through it. We were riding on a climb, and at 5K going up, we passed a sign that said, 35K to the top, and I almost died. Sean said, 'Just stay on my wheel.' "
Though he never has won a stage of the Tour de France, which begins July 1 this year, Andreu has finished second in two stages and was the only American to finish the event in 1994 and 1996.
And Armstrong's victory last year, less than three years after he was diagnosed with testicular cancer, wouldn't have been possible without the backs and legs of U.S. Postal teammates such as Andreu, Tyler Hamilton and Christian Vande Velde.
As captain of the nine-member team, Andreu controlled the pace of the peloton to safeguard Armstrong's position, and he helped chase down breakaway riders.
"Frankie's role has always been in the form of a domestique as they call it, a helper," Ochowicz said. "It means each team has its quarterback, halfbacks and ends and if you don't have that structure, the team can't be a team.
"Frankie's not the quarterback, he's more like a tight end, floating around in the end zone. But Frankie has always been the guy you can count on. His consistency speaks for itself. His services are always in need. The team doesn't function well without Frankie."
Only the winner of Saturday's trials race in Mississippi will earn an automatic berth on the U.S. Olympic team. Though the flat course doesn't suit Andreu's style of racing, there's a strong possibility that he could make the team as a coach's pick. The entire five-man team will be announced this summer after the Tour de France.
In the meantime, Andreu will keep piling on the miles. Wednesday, he was paced by his 60-year-old father, who rode in front of Frankie on a scooter to provide a draft to increase his speed. The idea is to simulate racing conditions.
"The plan is to go 35 miles an hour," the father said, lowering his voice, "but I keep it at 36."
Contact JO-ANN BARNAS at 313-222-2037 or barnas@freepress.com.

Detroit Free Press

May 24, 2000

CLOSE THIRD: Dearborn cyclist Frankie Andreu didn't win last Saturday's men's road race at the U.S. Olympic trials, but he didn't hurt his chances of making it to Sydney as a coach's pick.

In what could be called a photo finish, Andreu finished third in the 140-mile trials race in Jackson, Miss., with the same time as the winner, Antonio Cruz of Long Beach, Calif. -- 5:21:31.

"The top three, four guys were within a half a wheel," Andreu said. "I would have like to have won, but considering we had only three guys (from the U.S. Postal Service team) and the course wasn't the best for me, I was happy with it."

Andreu's next big race before he leaves for Europe is the USA pro championships in Philadelphia on June 4.

"We will have to pay attention to every breakaway," said Andreu, 33. "If a break gets five or six minutes up the road and no one is chasing them, we may have to take the initiative because you can't afford to let it go and get up 20 minutes.

"Everyone waits each other out in a situation like that. You gamble a bit if you know your team is a little stronger and your objective is to win the whole race, not just a stage. You have to decide who you want to let go (in a breakaway) and who you don't."

Tour de France 2000
July 1 - 23, 2000

stage	date	route	distance	place	time	overall	g.c.
1	July 1	Futuroscope ITT	16.5 km	153	21:30.100	153	2:26
2	July 2	Futuroscope - Loudun	191 km	153	s.t.	151	2:29
3	July 3	Loudun - Nantes	170 km	61	:09	148	2:29
4	July 4	Nantes - Saint-Nazaire (Team TT)	69 km (Team TT)	2	:46	31	2:49
5	July 5	Vannes - Vitré	198 km	165	:10	31	2:49
6	July 6	Vitré - Tours	197 km	117	7:49	39	8:29
7	July 7	Tours - Limoges	192 km	173	2:32	61	9:50
8	July 8	Limoges - Villeneuve-sur-Lot	200 km	160	5:42	71	9:50
9	July 9	Agen - Dax	182 km	82	s.t.	72	9:50
10	July 10	Dax - Lourdes Hautacam	205 km	144	36:33	120	39:59
11	July 11	Bagnères-de-Bigorre - Revel	219 km	96	10:16	119	45:10
-	July 12	Rest Day	-	-	-	-	-
12	July 13	Carpentras - Mont Ventoux	149 km	131	20:52	123	1:06:14
13	July 14	Avignon - Draguignan	180 km	122	10:44	118	1:06:52
14	July 15	Draguignan - Briancon	249 km	141	36:52	119	1:40:53
15	July 16	Briancon - Courchevel	168 km	68	35:56	118	2:16:09
-	July 17	Rest Day	-	-	-	-	-
16	July 18	Courchevel - Morzine	196 km	122	30:55	115	2:45:03
17	July 19	Evian-les-Bains - Lausanne	155 km	113	4:19	111	2:49:22
18	July 20	Lausanne - Fribourg-en-Brisgau	252 km	118	15:40	110	2:49:22
19	July 21	Fribourg-en-Brisgau - Mulhouse ITT	59 km	104	10:10	110	2:59:32
20	July 22	Belfort - Troyes	248 km	111	2:43	110	3:02:15
21	July 23	Paris - Paris (Champs-Elysées)	135 km	44	s.t.	110	3:02:15

*note: stage 1 - Frankie took second place behind Marcel Wüst in his bid for the climber's jersey. He had 3 points, Marcel 5.
*note: stage 3 - US Postal is number one in team classification for the third straight day.
*note: stage 4 - The ONCE team recieved a 20 second time penalty on the stage.
*note: stage 17 - USPS is the only team with all nine riders.

Frankie leads the parade down the Champs Élysées

July 23, 2000 (from the new york times)

German Wins 20th Stage
but Armstrong's Lead Is Solid

By SAMUEL ABT

ROYES, France, July 22 -- The star German sprinter Erik Zabel finally crossed the finish line first in the Tour de France today, ending three years without a victory (three years and nine days, but who's counting besides him?). "Whew," Zabel said with a broad smile. 
Zabel, who races for the Telekom team, has registered many successes since his last of seven Tour victories. Among them are triumphs in the esteemed Milan-San Remo classic in March, which he has won three times, and in the Amstel Gold Race classic in May, as well as the overall lead this year in the World Cup series of one-day races. 
Until this 20th of 21 stages today, he had 15 victories this year, a big number, but none of them in the Tour since July 13, 1997. 
After that he had 10 second places in the Tour, including two this year, and five third places, including three this year. 
Zabel won with a fine display of teamwork, getting strong leadouts from two teammates in the final few hundred meters and then powering his way to victory by half a bicycle wheel over Robbie McEwen, an Australian with Farm Frites, and Jeroen Blijlevens, a Dutchman with Polti. Bumped by another rider in the stretch, Blijlevens could only pound his handlebar once in frustration as he finished. 
Zabel was timed in 6 hours 14 minutes 13 seconds for the 158-mile (254.5-kilometer) ride from Belfort in eastern France to Troyes. Lance Armstrong maintained his unassailable overall lead of 6:02 over Zabel's teammate, Jan Ullrich. 
The length of this stage, one day before the finale in Paris, was denounced by many riders, who noted that this was the third stage over 150 miles in the last week. 
"Insane," Frankie Andreu said beforehand. He finished in 111th place, 2:43 behind the winner, but was untroubled. 
Andreu did not ride for high placing today nor in the final individual time trial on Friday nor in the two breakaways he joined as the race made its way to the Pyrenees and Alps. That's not his job; he needs to save himself to work for Armstrong, the leader of their United States Postal Service team. 
"My job is to help the team," Andreu, 33, explained before the stage. "We're here to get the yellow jersey, and I'm here to protect it." 
Andreu is widely known as one of the most selfless and most durable team workers in the sport. When the race finishes on Sunday, Andreu will have completed his ninth Tour de France in nine appearances. Among the 128 riders left of the 177 who set out July 1, few can match his record. 
"A little bit is determination and just suffering through the hard parts," he said. "A lot of it is luck, being able to stay out of crashes. You can't always control where you are, and sometimes things just happen." 
When they do, he remounts and keeps going. 
As a team worker, Andreu gets few chances to ride for individual victory because he must remain near Armstrong, who has no need to contest a final sprint and no chance to jump into a mass breakaway. 
Even before Armstrong wore the leader's yellow jersey, Andreu was occupied by his duties of riding ahead of Armstrong and sheltering him from the wind or offering his wheel if the leader had a flat. 
"That first week, when Lance didn't have the jersey, our job was to keep him in the front and to keep him as rested as possible," Andreu said. Leaders try to stay at the front to avoid sudden attacks and mass crashes. 
"This has been a hard Tour," Andreu said, "partly because of the weather. It was so windy the first week, and that meant a lot of work to keep Lance in the front. And then, when he took the jersey" -- on the 10th day -- "there's a lot of energy that you don't realize you're expending trying to stay in the front and battle the wind. You're paying the price the last week." 
That price is weariness. "It's not the wind now," Andreu said Friday. "Now it's the legs. Now it's plain fatigue. I'm tired." 
He worked hard in the mountains, where he does not shine. At 6 feet 2 inches and 180 pounds, Andreu is too big to climb the Pyrenees and Alps easily. 
"My job is to work before the climbs," he said, "and then the first part of the climbs. I have to stay in the front for the first part of the climb until I blow. Then I've just got to suffer like mad to stay in the group. 
"Everybody's got a job and you've got to do what you've got to do -- save the climbers as long as possible so they can do their job." 
Speaking of jobs, Andreu surprisingly reported that he has not yet been signed for a fourth year with the Postal Service team and a 13th year as a professional. 
"I'm unemployed right now," he said. 
"So I'm looking. I'm still talking with Postal Service, and I've got to talk with some other teams." 
Wherever he winds up, he agreed, if he returns to the Tour de France next year, he expects to work hard for his leader and attempt to stretch his own record of finishing the race.

Cyclist Andreu awaits Sydney call
Detroit Free Press
July 27, 2000

IN THE quiet of his apartment in Nice, France, Frankie Andreu of Dearborn settled in for a Michigan-made celebration. It was Sunday night, hours after he and his U.S. Postal Service teammates helped Lance Armstrong to a second straight victory in the Tour de France.
On the table in front of him was a bottle of champagne, and "a Zingerman's pecan pie my wife brought from Ann Arbor," Andreu said. "I ate half of it. That was my paradise."
Andreu, 33, completed his ninth consecutive Tour de France, a record for an American cyclist. Although he was captain of the nine-member Postal team, Andreu is known for being "Lance's lieutenant" because he was the rider most responsible for directing the team to safeguard Armstrong's position.
In winning the three-week, 2,250-mile race, Armstrong became the first rider since Miguel Indurain to win consecutive Tours. Indurain won the last of his five straight in 1995.
The scene was dramatic Sunday as Armstrong and his teammates rode part of the 21st and final stage arm-in-arm, finishing on the Champs-Elysees in Paris. Armstrong, who held off 1997 winner Jan Ullrich of Germany by 6:02, has won two straight Tours after overcoming testicular cancer that had spread to his lungs and brain.
While Armstrong returned to the United States to make the talk-show circuit, Andreu remained in France to recover for his next two races in Spain, including the Clasica San Sebastian, where he was the top American rider last year.
"I've been taking three naps a day," Andreu said by phone Wednesday. "The body realizes that it's over and it finally shuts down, overwhelmed by fatigue. You have no energy to do anything."
Andreu, a 1996 Olympian, will know Tuesday whether he will be selected as a coach's pick for this year's Olympic road cycling team. He finished fourth at the Atlanta Games.
"I would love to go, but it's out of my hands," Andreu said. "There are a lot of good young riders, a bigger pool to choose from."
Regardless, Andreu hopes to do one more Tour de France to finish his career. His wife, Betsy, is expecting their second child in January.
"I'd like to do my 10th, and that will be it," Andreu said. "Lance is going good, and I think he's capable of winning his third straight, and I'd like to be part of that. But it's getting to the point where it's time to step aside and let some of the other riders take over. These have been the best two Tour de Frances I have ever been in." 
Contact JO-ANN BARNAS at 313-222-2037 or barnas@freepress.com

Vuelta a Burgos - 2.1
Spain, August 7-10, 2000

distance place time g.c.

Stage 1 - August 7 Miranda de Ebro-San Juan del Monte, Mountain ITT 6 km 59 :45 59

Stage 2 - August 8 Burgos-Clunia 181 km 71 1:12 62

Stage 3 - August 9 Pradoluengo-Lagunas de Neila 164 km 108 10:25 96

Stage 4 - August 10 Medina de Pomar-Burgos 164 km 73 10:25 87

Classica San Sebastian - CDM
San Sebastian, Spain, August 12, 2000

87 Frankie Andreu (USA) US Postal Service

40th Ronde van Nederland - 2.1
Netherlands, August 21-26, 2000

Prologue August 21 Den Bosch ITT, 4.0 km 38 :16 38 :16

Stage 1 August 22 Den Bosch - Utrecht 180.7 km 84 s.t. 42 :18

Stage 2 August 23 Utrecht - Hoorn 185.5 km 34 s.t. 40 :26

Stage 3 August 24 Bolsward - Leeuwarden 91.0 km 80 1:04 79 2:15

Stage 4 August 24 Leeuwarden ITT 19.8 km 37 1:19 63 3:11

Stage 5 August 25 Harderwijk - Venlo 186.2 km 102 1:03 78 3:50

Stage 6 August 26 Blerick - Landgraaf 227.6 km 64 7:17 59 11:07

Cyclocross race at Bloomer park in Rochester Hills, MI

Photos by Jeff Gray

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