BIOGRAPHY

Dede was born October 8, 1972, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She is the youngest of 8 children. Dede’s parents, Francis and Margadette, sent her to Saint Robert’s grade school and throughout her elementary school years, she was involved in a myriad of extracurricular activities. She participated in gymnastics, figure skating, swimming, art classes, piano lessons, ballet, choir, Irish dancing, baseball, soccer, and volleyball. She was always active, and took a special liking to sports as she was a natural athlete.

When she was eight years old, her father took her to the Milwaukee speed skating oval, where she watched Eric and Beth Heiden skate in the World Championships. She was intrigued by them and by the sport of speed skating. She met a coach at the event who offered to take her out for a skate. She fell in love with the skating immediately. It was through speed skating that Dede began to have Olympic aspirations. She advanced rapidly in the sport, qualifying for the Junior National Team when she was thirteen years old.

As she progressed in Speedskating, her coach, Mike Woods encouraged her to try cycling in the summer for cross training. Dede found a balance in her high school years competing in skating meets in the winter and bicycle races in the summer. She had much success competing in the Junior World Championships in skating and cycling. In 1989, she won the Junior World Cycling Championships in Moscow. Competing at an elite international level meant she would spend much of her time traveling the world to competitions.

Competing at a world class level in two sports while attending high school was demanding for Dede, but she credits this as a very valuable experience, in that it forced her to learn how to manage her time most effectively. In Fall of 1990, Dede started at Marquette University where she declared a Biology major. She continued skating that fall, but her coaches thought her schedule had become too demanding and it was time to her to narrow her focus and choose one sport to pursue at the elite level. This was a tough decision for Dede, as she truly loved competing in both sports, but she choose to move on in cycling and put her skating career on hold.

In the forth-coming years, Dede achieved much success at the World level, winning two gold medals at the Pan American Games, two World Championship medals, and six National Championship titles. In 2000 Dede returned to the University and took a break from racing. After a two year break from racing, Dede came back to win the 2002 Montreal World Cup. In 2003, Dede completed her undergraduate honors thesis in International Affairs and a minor in French at the University of Colorado. In 2004 she focused her energy on the Olympic games in Athens, Greece and won a silver medal in the time trial.

Dede feels fortunate that she has been able to travel the world competing in races. She feels these experiences have expanded her knowledge and her social and communication skills. She has lived, trained, and raced with people of all different cultures and backgrounds. She has learned to adapt and work in foreign environments.

In October of 2004, Dede announced her retirement from racing and in the past year, she has focused her energy on creating a series of “Talent ID camps” with USA Cycling women’s National Team coach, Jim Miller. She is also public speaking, writing articles for several different publications and recently completed writing a book, Fitness Cycling which will be published by Human Kinetics in June 2006. She lives in Boulder, Colorado and Girona, Spain with her husband, Canadian Olympian Michael Barry, who races professionally with the Discovery Channel Cycling Team.