March 23, 2002
Sullivan home to cycle guru
GLEN SPEY: Mike Fraysse is a man of many hats, but his main passion is helping to develop cycling talent.
By J.P. Partland
For The Times Herald-Record
Mike Fraysse is a busy guy. Besides being an accomplished cook, he has a multiple-course meal of a life.
Fraysse runs cycling camps out of his Sullivan County home, coaches at home and on the road, takes bike
racers to events in the U.S., Europe, Central and South America, and serves as vice president of the Pan
Am Confederation and vice president of the International Sports Union.
Already this year, he's taken a team of cyclists to race the two-week Vuelta a Cuba – The Tour of Cuba, that
country's 12-day answer to the Tour de France. Fraysse is off to Cuba again tomorrow, to direct and coach
another set of racers at another series of races in and around Havana.
This hectic pace is nothing new to Fraysse. He's been doing variations on this theme his entire adult life. And
he learned how to do it at home.
Fraysse, 58, is a third-generation cycling lifer. In Italy, the most ardent cycling fans are known as "tifosi." The
term doesn't do his family justice.
Emile Fraysse, Mike's grandfather, was a founding member of the ABLA, the racing federation that still
survives today as the United States Cycling Federation. Vic Fraysse, Mike's dad, was president of the USCF
and served on the board, as well as running a bike shop, an orchestra and a racing club.
Mike Fraysse started racing at the age of 6. One of his bigger highlights was racing the Cyclocross World
Championships – a winter bike racing discipline – in 1972. As a coach and manager, he has been to the
1975 Pan American Games, the 1976 and 1984 Olympics, and 14 World Championships.
Despite the championship pedigree, Fraysse always returns to the grass roots to find and nurture new talent.
The Mike Fraysse Sports Resort, which doubles as his home, began in 1993. It was after 30 years of running
Park Cycle, a retail bike shop in Ridgefield Park, N.J., that was also a wholesaler, importer and
manufacturer. It was a dream Fraysse had been nurturing for a long time.
"I had a dream to do my own training center so I didn't have the restrictions of the Olympic Committee of the
Fed (cycling federation) and do it the way I thought it should be done," Fraysse said. "I looked all over the
country, wherever I went on a trip, I looked."
The center is a good place for cyclists to train – lots of rooms, plenty of training and testing equipment, and
miles of lightly traveled hilly roads.
Fraysse is preparing to take 28 people to race and train in Cuba for two weeks. When he returns, he'll be
back to coaching cyclists, running camps, and developing his America's Cycling Team, a nationwide cycling
club.
"Our whole focus has an international flavor," he said. "We also bring up athletes from the Pan Am region to
compete in the summertime. So it is a nice international friendship kind of thing."
Mike Fraysse Sports Training Camps
About Us
About Mike Fraysse
1976 and '84 US Olympic Team Manager and 19-time World and Pan
American Championship coach Mike Fraysse has been involved with the
sport of cycling all his life. A fourth-generation cyclist whose grandfather
founded what is today the United States Cycling Federation, Fraysse was a
world-class racer with a National Championship title to his palmares before
moving into the coaching role. In 1979 he brought Polish coach Eddie "B"
Borysewicz over from the Eastern Bloc, and together the two went about
revolutionizing the sport of cycling in America.
Fraysse has had a hand in the development of such riders as Greg
Lemond, Ron Kiefel, Alexi Grewal, Andy Hampsten, Davis Phinney, Betsy
Davis, Connie Carpenter, Rebecca Twigg, Beth Heiden, Eric Heiden, Lance
Armstrong, and Steve Woznik, to name just a few.
To date, Fraysse has personally produced 42 National Champions, 5 Pan
Am Games Gold Medalists, 1 World Cup Medalist, 15 World Championships
Medalists, 1 individual Tour de France Winner, and 2 Tour de France Team
Classification Winners.
Fraysse has also contributed heavily to the development of the bicycle industry. As In 1979 he built the very
first aerodynamic frame with tear-drop tubing for Greg Lemond to use in his silver medal ride at the Junior
World Championships. Other notable inventions include the concor
saddle and the female-specific saddle with anatomical cutout, to name
just a few.
For his contributions to the sport, in 1998 Fraysse became one of the
only Americans ever to recieve the prestigious Merit Award from the
UCI, cycling's world governing body, and later that same year he was
inducted into the US Bicycling Hall of Fame.
About Mike Fraysse Sports
Since 1994, Fraysse has operated
Mike Fraysse Sports, LLC., a cycling- and triathlon-specific training center
located in the foothills of New York's Catskill Mountains just 2 hours from
New York City and 3 hours from Philadelphia. Situated on 28 secluded
acres, the Sports Resort features a Victorian
Mansion where 4-course gourmet meals are
served three times daily, guest accomodations
for visitors and athletes each with private bath
and cable TV, gym, computrainer and roller
rooms, a full-size swimming pool, deck, and
volleyball court.
.
Camps are conducted throughout the year for a
wide range of abilities-- from beginners and
recreational riders all the way up to elite
national-caliber professionals. In addition to the
Sports Resort, Mike Fraysse Sports, LLC. also conducts a large number of
international racing trips, along with their renowned winter training camp held in
Argentina each February and March.
http://mftrainingcamps.blogspot.com/2008/05/test-7.html
Somerset Wheelmen Celebrate 70 Years!
Mike Fraysse named as keynote speaker for celebration planned for January 2007
Somerville, NJ - December 14, 2006 - The Somerset Wheelmen, based in Somerville, New Jersey,
th
proudly announce the 70 anniversary of their bicycle club. To recognize the occasion, the club invites
all former, current and prospective Somerset Wheelmen members, family and friends to celebrate this
milestone on January 27, 2007 in Bridgewater, New Jersey, along with guest speaker Mike Fraysse,
current President of the USCF Board of Trustees and Vice President of the Pan American Cycling
Confederation.
"I am proud to be associated with Somerset Wheelmen and all the men and women who have made this
club great," said Joe Saling, 18-time national champion, 5-time Pan American champion and lifetime
member.
The Somerset Wheelmen were established in 1936 by Fred "Pop" Kugler. Pop and other Somerset
members started the Tour of Somerville in 1940 which is now the longest continually run bicycle
race in the United States. In 1940, when there were only three national titles to contest, they were all
won by Somerset Wheelmen. Furman Kugler, Mildred Kugler and Harry Naismith all won the
national titles in Senior Men, Women, and Juniors, respectively. Local favorite Allen Bell was a
Somerset Wheelmen member when he made the 1956 and 1960 US Olympic Teams and also when
he won the gold medal in the 1959 Pan Am Games. Jonas Carney (US Olympian, 25-time National
Champion and 2006 Team Director for Pro Team Kodakgallery.com/Sierra Nevada), Jamie Carney
(Pro rider for Prime Alliance) and Jon Erdelyi (Current Espoir National Road Champion and
member of the Division III Ofoto-Lombardi Sports Pro Cycling Team) are just a few of the
professionally successful riders who started cycling with Somerset. That tradition of excellence still
continues to the present day. The club has ten current national and Pan American cycling
championships in addition to over 50 national championship titles tallied over the years.
In recent years, the Somerset Wheelmen have cultivated a very strong developmental women's team
and founded the Women's Developmental Cycling Alliance, a volunteer group of women racers
committed to increasing women's cycling in New Jersey. Somerset also boasts a dominant Master's
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team and Junior team, with members of the only 4 generation racing family in New Jersey. In
addition, the club promotes the Readington Time Trial, Flanders Time Trial, and New Jersey State
Masters Road Race Championships. The tradition of excellence in cycling and the strong support
for all levels of cyclists in New Jersey will continue as Somerset Wheelmen members continue to
make history going forward.
Founder of America's Cycling Team (ACT) program and Mike Fraysse's Sports Resort, Mike
Fraysse is the current President of the Board of Trustees of the USCF and Vice President of the Pan
American Cycling Confederation. He served as President of the United States Cycling Federation,
from 1979-1981 and from 1994-1998 and was a member of the USCF's Board of Directors from
1969-1994. In addition, he consulted for the Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee during
their preparations for the 1984 Games, and managed both the 1984 and 1976 U.S. Olympic Cycling
Teams. Since 1994, Fraysse has operated Mike Fraysse's Sports, LLC, based in New York's Catskill
Mountains. In recognition of his efforts to increase the global popularity of competitive cycling, the
Union Cicliste Internationale (UCI) presented Fraysse with its prestigious Merit Award in 1998. He
is one of the only Americans to have ever received such an honor.