Frey is best in U.S. at Under-23 trials

While his classmates were gearing up for another school year over the summer, junior Nick Frey was celebrating his first place finish at the Under-23 National Time Trial by training for the Under-23 World Time Trials in Germany.

Frey qualified for Worlds by taking the top spot on the podium at Nationals on July 13. Frey started training specifically for the National Time Trials just this past year. He traveled to Seven Springs resort in Pennsylvania for the race with an entourage of his father and his coach, Donny Quixote, a former bike messenger from Chicago. After taking his turn at the course relatively early in the group of riders, he stood by the finish line to see how his competition would measure up.

"All the good guys were racing at the end, so I set the fast time early but expected five to 10 people to beat it," Frey said. "My goal had been to win nationals within three years, so I couldn't believe it when it happened this year. I was the only one on the podium who was in college."

Frey has just returned from Worlds where he placed 57th in the 38.1 km race. Though he was disappointed with his showing, he already has his sights set on defending his national title next year in order to qualify for a return to the World time trials.

While he only started focusing on the National time trials recently, Frey's journey began much earlier. Cycling became his primary sport at age 15, when he chose it over soccer.

"My best friend went to a bike shop to get a new tire when he was 13, and the guy behind the counter mentioned that he was coaching a development team," Frey said. "I joined the team the next year, when I was 14, and quit soccer the year after that. I had been playing soccer since I was five; cycling was new."

Frey stayed with the team for three years, traveling to Florida, South Carolina and Texas for Junior Nationals each year. Success came early for Frey, with a sixth place finish at his first Junior Nationals road race.

"It was a complete fluke," Frey said. "It's not like cross country when you know who the fast guys are. On any given day, anyone within reason could win the race, especially at that age. I didn't know it was a fluke — I took it as motivation."

Frey started racing with Quixote when he was 16. With a second place finish at Nationals that year, Frey qualified for Toby Stanton's Hot Tubes Development Cycling Team for the next two years. Stanton picks the top few junior cyclists in the country and takes them to Europe to race for three weeks in May.

"Stanton taught us how to think about your teammates before yourself," Frey said. "Immediately you're traveling and living and racing with people you just met, and you have to sacrifice your own hopes of winning to help them win. I had never been on a team where I wasn't the strongest guy, but with Hot Tubes sometimes it didn't even matter if I finished a race; my job was to help someone else on the team win."

At Princeton, Frey became his own coach before rejoining Quixote last year. He made his own workout plans and went riding on a special time trial bike. This year, he is the co-president of Princeton's cycling team and rode a roller bike for three hours to encourage people to sign up at the activities fair. He and fellow junior and co-president Brian Holmes, who just started cycling last season, plan team rides and team brunches each weekend. The season consists of nine races on consecutive weekends starting in March. Nick Bennette GS won the Eastern Collegiate Cycling Conference (ECCC) Championship in 2006, and Frey won in 2007 with Bennette taking home the sprinter's jersey.

The team took second place by 12 seconds at the National Team Time Trial Championship in May last season, and Frey believes it has the depth to win outright this year. Last year's winner, Western Washington University, actively recruits and offers scholarships to its cyclists, as do most of the universities that provide Princeton's toughest competition. The team has three times as many members as it did last year and welcomes people of all skill levels to join.

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While Frey will be competing in some ECCC races this season, he is also planning for next summer, which he will spend with the professional cycling team Kelly Benefits, following the National Racing Calendar circuit.

"I'm looking at it like an internship," Frey said. "It's a big transition from going to school and cycling, to cycling to put food on the table. There's not much job security — teams can fold, sponsors can pull out or you can get injured. There are around 200 professional cyclists in the United States, and a lot of them aren't making a living. It's a steep pyramid."

Considering the effort he put in this past summer, that appears to be a risk Frey is willing to take.