Phast Phinney
He's one of the world's fastest cyclists, he's got a great family, and his model/swimmer girlfriend is gorgeous enough to, as Mick Jagger put it, make a grown man cry. Right now is a pretty good time to be Taylor Phinney, but next month could be even better, if he somehow pulls out a medal-winning performance in Beijing.
It's not inconceivable. The son of two of America's greatest athletes, speed skater/cyclist Connie Carpenter and Tour de France stage winner Davis Phinney—both Olympic medalists themselves—Taylor hit the genetic Powerball. But he's also a pretty unique kid, cycling talent aside, poised and confident and just generally comfortable in his own skin. He can be funny on camera, too, a blessed relief from the typical one-dimensional, cliche-spouting Olympian you'll be seeing too much of next month. And he just keeps getting faster.
I watched Taylor smoke a world-class field at the UCI Track World Cup in January, and in February I spent a day with him, his sister Kelsey (a good junior XC skier) as well as Connie and Davis, who's dealing with young-onset Parkinson's disease. When I sat down to profile Taylor for 5280 Magazine, I realized that his family was the real story.
We'll be seeing more of this kid--if not on the Olympic podium (he's racing the 4000-meter individual pursuit on the track), then racing internationally for the Garmin-Chipotle professional team. Tune in to the Tour de France in, say, 2010 and you'll see him in action...
It's not inconceivable. The son of two of America's greatest athletes, speed skater/cyclist Connie Carpenter and Tour de France stage winner Davis Phinney—both Olympic medalists themselves—Taylor hit the genetic Powerball. But he's also a pretty unique kid, cycling talent aside, poised and confident and just generally comfortable in his own skin. He can be funny on camera, too, a blessed relief from the typical one-dimensional, cliche-spouting Olympian you'll be seeing too much of next month. And he just keeps getting faster.
I watched Taylor smoke a world-class field at the UCI Track World Cup in January, and in February I spent a day with him, his sister Kelsey (a good junior XC skier) as well as Connie and Davis, who's dealing with young-onset Parkinson's disease. When I sat down to profile Taylor for 5280 Magazine, I realized that his family was the real story.
We'll be seeing more of this kid--if not on the Olympic podium (he's racing the 4000-meter individual pursuit on the track), then racing internationally for the Garmin-Chipotle professional team. Tune in to the Tour de France in, say, 2010 and you'll see him in action...
Accelerating out of a standing start, Taylor brings his bike up to speed with a few powerful pedal strokes, then settles into an aerodynamic tuck, flying around the banked oval track like a runaway roulette ball.
The fans are screaming for him, pounding the trackside boards as he blurs past, his carbon-fiber rear wheel practically snarling as it flies over the smooth wooden planks. It's sort of a hometown crowd: Taylor has been coming to Los Angeles to train for the World Cup for the past six months, taking four-day weekends here and there with the tacit approval of his Boulder High teachers—most of them, at least.
Despite its name, the individual pursuit is not a strictly solo race: Two riders start on opposite sides of the track, and basically try to catch each other. That's why it's called a "pursuit," but it's really more like a duel. Since Taylor had the second-fastest qualifying time, which got him into the final round, the worst he could do was win the silver medal. His opponent, Dutch national champion Jenning Huizenga, would be tough to beat. While resting in a borrowed motor home before the final, Taylor mused on his prospects.
"He said, 'Wow, second place is really good,'" Lim remembers. "Then he said: 'What the hell am I thinking? I'm here to win a bike race.'"
Which he is not on the way to doing, halfway into this race. After eight laps out of 16, he has fallen a solid half-second down on Huizenga. But then the time gap starts dropping, lap by lap. "I kicked it up a gear," Taylor told me. "It hurt, but it was now or never, so you might as well give it everything. It was painful, but I don't remember it as painful."
What he remembers is the crowd, the announcer screaming, his USA Cycling coach yelling time splits at him until finally he was in the lead. He always finishes faster than he started, while most of his competitors slow down toward the end of the race. He crosses the line a half-second ahead of Huizenga to win his first World Cup race—and to become, in four and a half minutes, an Olympic medal contender.
"Yeah!" shouts Davis as he bounds back down to the track infield. "There's a new sheriff in town!"
posted by Bill Gifford at 9:31 AM
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