Counter Strike

Andy Schleck Biography

10/21/2010

Full name Andy Schleck
Date of birth June 10, 1985 (age 25)

Place of birth Luxembourg City, Luxembourg
Height 1.86 m (6 ft 1 in)
Weight 68 kg (150 lb; 10.7 st)
Team information
Current team Team Saxo Bank
Discipline Road
Role Rider
Rider type GC rider

Andy Schleck (born June 10, 1985) is a Luxembourgian professional road bicycle racer for UCI ProTour team Team Saxo Bank. He is the younger brother of Fränk Schleck, who also rode for Team Saxo Bank. Their father Johny Schleck rode the Tour de France and Vuelta a España between 1965 and 1974.

                     Amateur

Schleck joined VC Roubaix cycling club in 2004, and caught the attention of Cyrille Guimard, a sports director who became famous as the directeur sportif for several Tour de France winners, including Bernard Hinault, Laurent Fignon, Lucien Van Impe and American Greg LeMond. Guimard described Schleck as one of the biggest talents he had seen and compared him to Laurent Fignon.

Still an amateur, Schleck won the 2004 Flèche du Sud stage race at 18. As the Danish national team were in the race, word spread to the Danish Team CSC manager Bjarne Riis. Riis asked Fränk, already on Team CSC, about his brother, and Andy started as a stagiaire for Team CSC on September 1, 2004. He secured a professional contract with CSC, and made his debut in a ProTour race at age 19 (the 2005 Volta a Catalunya).

                Professional

 e and Fränk shared the 2005 National Championships, Fränk taking the road race and Andy the individual time trial. In 2006, Schleck crashed in the GP Cholet and took an eight-week break before returning for the Volta a Catalunya in May. In July, a few days after his brother won the Alpe d'Huez stage of the Tour de France, Andy won the major mountain stage in the Sachsen Tour, followed by the final stage, finishing 23rd overall.

In the 2007 Giro d'Italia, he won the young rider classification and was second in the general classification after Danilo Di Luca. He finished fourth at the Giro di Lombardia after helping his brother Fränk, who crashed with six kilometres to go.

Schleck's success continued in 2008 when he won the young rider classification in the Tour De France,holding off Roman Kreuziger, and helping CSC win the team classification and Carlos Sastre the maillot jaune.

In 2009 he won the biggest victory of his career so far, when a strong April culminated with an impressive victory in Liège–Bastogne–Liège, as he became the first winner of the race from Luxembourg since Marcel Ernzer in 1954.A few days before he had finished runner-up in La Flèche Wallonne.

In the 2009 Tour de France overall classification, he finished the Tour in second place, behind Alberto Contador and ahead of Lance Armstrong, along with finishing Stage 17 in 3rd place behind his brother Fränk Schleck (1) and Alberto Contador (2). He again won the Young Rider Classification in the 2009 Tour de France.

In the 2010 Tour de France, he was much closer to the victory — against Alberto Contador again — but took the second place (by 39 seconds) and won Young Rider Classification for the third time in a row. Schleck was involved in a controversial incident on the Tour de France: When his chain fell off on a mountain stage, his main rival for the Tour, Alberto Contador, did not stop and thereby took the lead from Schleck. Some sections of the media saw Contador's behaviour as unsporting, and felt he should have allowed Schleck to regain the lost time. Schleck lost 39 seconds on that stage in the mountains, the same number of seconds by which he eventually lost the Tour de France. Schleck was only the second man to ever win the white jersey for best young rider 3 times; the first was Jan Ullrich who won in 1996-98. He also won two mountain stages, and rode in the yellow jersey for six days.

On July 29, 2010, Schleck and his brother Fränk announced their departure from Team Saxo Bank at the end of 2010. They plan on forming a brand-new Luxembourg-based team, with former Saxo Bank director Kim Andersen. Schleck will be replaced on team Saxo Bank by Alberto Contador.

This picture I made for the signature of the week for a forum zezanje.net..:)