ETSU student headed to World Championships
Published June 10, 2011- Press Staff Writer
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Geoffrey Fryer will spend about 44 explosive seconds in Copenhagen this summer as he speeds down a 354-meter track at the BMX World Championships.
The trip will be the first time the East Tennessee State University soon-to-be graduate student has been abroad. But it is a leg in his journey to the 2016 Olympic Games. He will actually be in Denmark for several days beginning July 24. It takes about 44 seconds or so to complete the track, which he will do several times on his custom built 20-inch BMX bike.
“When I was little, I think I was about 8 or 9, my mom took me to my first track,” Fryer, now 24, said of how he began cycling. “I kind of got hooked then.”
Fryer lived too far away from the track to go there each day, so he built his own jumps at his house.
He didn’t really bike much in high school. But after graduation he got a mountain bike and started racing cross country. He placed second in his first mountain bike race. In fact, the Cycling Club at ETSU is why he came here.
“My first week here I had 11 stitches in my shin,” he said. “The next weekend I broke my scapula (shoulder blade). And then I recovered that next year and came back and won collegiate and nationals that year.”
He has placed in the top four in collegiate cycling competitions each year and has been the top rider in the Southeastern Cycling Conference.
Fryer paid for a trip this past winter to race at the Olympic Training Center in San Diego for the United States Nationals. This race is required for the BMX World Championships.
He did not place in the top 16 in the U.S. Nationals but sent a nomination form asking to be on the team going to the World Championships. A few weeks ago, he got an word he would be on the team.
But he had to come up with the money for plane tickets, a passport, a hotel, food, cabs and other expenses, including the cost of rushing documents overnight to race organizers.
“I was really excited at first and then I got really scared,” he said of realizing he was going to Europe. “I realized that they gave me three days to get everything together before I had to have everything in and then the question of like paying for it came up. And it’s expensive, because there’s just so much cost that goes with it.”
For Fryer the cost is well worth it. After he began to perform well in races in 2007 he thought he would take it further and attempt a shot at the Olympics in 2016.
Then in the summer of 2009 he worked for Lance Armstrong’s coach and that cinched it for him; he would try for a spot in 2016.
“Racing is just something that I love to do and more than that I just like to ride,” Fryer said. “Everyone kind of has their purpose, and so this kind of gives me like my sense.”
The BMX World Championships are scheduled for late July, and one month later he will begin the master’s program in exercise science and sport performance at ETSU. Updates and more information about Fryer’s journey can be found on his blog at www.flyerfryer.blogspot.com.
Fryer graduated from ETSU in December and plans on beginning the master’s program in exercise and sport science this fall.
Read more: http://johnsoncitypress.com/Sports/article.php?id=91365#ixzz1P6dLZF00
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