‘The Last Time I Had This Focus I Was 18 or 19’: Taylor Phinney Goes All in on Olympic Dream

This week marked a turning point in the curious career of Taylor Phinney, with the rider once believed to be the future of US cycling making a returning to international competition that few, including himself, would have bet upon.

Now 36 years of age, the Coloradan abruptly walked away from the top level of the sport in 2019, quitting at just 29.

That retirement happened five years after a huge crash at the US national road race championships left him with a compound fracture to his tibia plus a severed patellar tendon, and put him out of competition for well over a year.

Phinney never regained his momentum nor his full motivation but now, having dabbled in cyclocross racing, he’s fully back.

On Wednesday he helped the US team pursuit squad to seventh in the track world championships and then set a personal best time en route to eighth in the individual pursuit on Friday.

The medals are still some way off but he’s making rapid progress and has surprised many.

“It’s a blast from the past,” he told Velo in his typical laid back style this week. “The me of one year ago probably wouldn’t have expected this.

“It just stemmed from me getting linked up with BMC again as a kind of a bike partner sponsor. They sent me a fast road bike and SRAM helped me build it up. All of a sudden I had this weapon of a bike. Then I realized that I really enjoyed going super-fast.”

It was an unlikely return, particularly as Phinney was so burned out after his road career that he sold all his road bikes. He needed a compete mental break and took that, focussing on art and DJing, although he always retained some contact with the sport.

“I was just riding mountain bikes. I mean, I never stopped riding bikes. I love riding bikes,” he said. “But I thought I would never really ride road bikes again.”

‘I might as well give it a shot’

Phinney’s dabbling with the sport saw him get into gravel racing in recent years. He rode the Traka 360 last season and then this year returned to that event and also did Sahara Gravel, the Life Time Sea Otter Classic and Life Time Unbound.

His wife Kasia Niewiadoma was also another clear link to cycling, being one of the very best riders in the world.

Getting his new BMC bike finally opened a door and led in turn to a surprising return to international racing.

“I started riding this fast road bike and that allowed me to train more with Kasia,” he explained, speaking from the track worlds in China. “I just really enjoyed the rhythm of the days of getting out and expanding my physical radius and also working on the systems of my own personal engine.

“It felt like I was this retired guy who was just enjoying riding bikes again. And then somewhere along the way I realized that I’m still, let’s put in quotation marks, ‘only 36’ and that if you watch the Olympics, like the Winter Olympics last year, there were quite a lot of athletes like up into their forties.

“And even though I still feel in some way like I’m like 19 years old, I was just like, ‘do you know what, maybe this is something that I could try. I might as well give it a shot. Like, I have nothing to lose.’

“So I just put one foot ahead of the other, got in touch with USA Cycling and ended up going to a camp with the team pursuit boys.”

‘It takes 900 plus watts for 30 seconds’

Phinney went to that camp and while the other riders were younger than him, he settled right in. He started working with others such as the prodigious Ashlin Barry, recent winner of the under 23 road race at the world championships.

Barry is, according to Phinney, ‘a freaking monster,’ and hugely gifted.

Working with him and the other riders has been motivating, and has also given Phinney a clear direction. He knows the clock is ticking in terms of his own physical potential and he uses that time constraint for focus.

He’s all in, knowing that the sacrifices will only be in place for a couple of years.

“Ashlin is in a position that I was in at that age, but he’s even more talented, I would say,” Phinney states. “He’s just seems like he’s happy with it and he loves it.

“But it’s a totally different mentality when you have the whole world in front of you versus when you’ve got a time limit on something. In a couple of years, I won’t be able to go as fast as my body can go now.

“So I’m appreciative of those two perspectives and having now experienced both of them.”

Phinney has found a good slot within the team. Twice world pursuit champion, he has been able to share his experience and guidance, while also bringing a lot of horsepower to the squad.

In August he, Anders Johnson, Colby Lange, and David Domonoske won the US national team pursuit title. It was, incredibly, his first elite track competition since taking the world pursuit title in 2010.

He’s continued building since then, seeing his numbers grow and grow as the times have come down. And even if the squad fell short of the goal of a top five finish in the worlds, Phinney and the other riders will use that performance as a benchmark to work even harder.

His role has been a clearly defined one and, given what is a very recent return to competition, it seems logical he will get better and better at it as time passes.

“We’re all quite tall, so, I’m actually doing the start, which I would not have predicted,” he said, explaining how he fits in. “All I need to do is get everybody up to like almost 70 Ks an hour within like 30 seconds.

“So that takes about 900 + watts for those 30 seconds. It’s definitely a different power experience that I would maybe prefer, cause it’s quite front loaded.

“Then I get on the back and I sort of die this slow death until I need to pull again. Then I pull maximally and I get out of the way. So my race is like 2 minutes and 15 seconds [he laughs] or whatever, maximally, which is interesting.

“I wouldn’t have thought of myself as a starter necessarily. But I definitely can execute it.”

A very specific target

Talking to Phinney, he’s clearly enjoying the rejuvenation of his career. Years ago he threw himself into art and DJing in order to explore parts of his personality not served by the tunnel vision approach of an elite athlete.

He’s flipped completely on that now, putting those other pursuits on something of a hold as he puts all the chips down on his competitive return. He’s all in on cycling, knowing he can return to those passions down the line.

Right now it’s all about the next Olympic Games. He knows that his time at this level of the sport is limited and he is prepared to do everything he can to become as strong as is possible.

“The last time I had this focus is probably when I was 18 or 19, after the Olympics in Beijing in 2008,” he said.

“But I still think I didn’t have to work so hard when I was younger. The sport was different. If you think about under 23 and junior riders now, they all are going to altitude, they do heat training, they’re super regimented, they’ve been on coaching plans for as long as they’ve been on a bike, they’re part of an under 23 WorldTour team, etc.

“We maybe started that wave with Axel Merckx and the under 23 team, back in the day, but I did not love training or going out and doing the work.

“That’s something that’s developed now because I recognize that it’s just about being consistent and doing the work. Putting everything into it day by day. That was not something that I really ever tapped into until maybe right before I broke my leg. And that was just a big turning point in the career in general.”

Phinney has a very clear target in mind for the LA Olympics. He has two near misses in past Games, disappointments which frustrated greatly at the time but serve to sharpen his focus now.

“The ultimate dream would be an Olympic medal for sure, speaking as a two time 4th place finisher,” he said. “That would be a cool end to the story.

“But just to be there and represent is also part of the dream.”