Post by allegra on Jan 23, 2008 9:16:21 GMT 8
amazing genetics , I hope he's as ferocious as Lance
I have his parent's Cycling training book
Mr. Rogers Neighborhood: Davis Phinney on Taylor's success, future
By Neal Rogers
VeloNews senior writer
Filed: January 22, 2008
Taylor Phinney has come a long way in a short time
photo: Don Karle
Taylor Phinney's pursuit victory at the UCI World Cup in Los Angeles last weekend sure makes us look smart for putting him and Danny Summerhill on our awards-issue cover.
Thanks, Taylor.
We gave the 17-year-old Phinney and 18-year-old Summerhill our "juniors of the year" award for their 2007 accomplishments, which included Summerhill's silver medal at the world junior cyclocross championship and Phinney's gold at the world junior time trial championship - the first-ever junior world title in that discipline.
And Phinney didn't waste any time getting there. In only his second year of racing after winning 23 races in 2006, he began the 2007 season with a virtual tie for the overall win in the Category 2 Tour of the Gila, racing against men twice his age. He next took the overall at July's Tour l'Abitibi, then shocked the cycling community in October by winning the national pursuit title at his first-ever velodrome competition.
On November 30, competing in his first UCI track World Cup, Phinney finished ninth in the men's 4km individual pursuit with a time of 4:29.118 - six seconds faster than his time at nationals. One week later, at the Beijing World Cup, Phinney finished fourth, setting another PR of 4:24.364 and losing in the final for the bronze by just 0.109 second.
So perhaps it shouldn't have surprised anyone last weekend when Phinney qualified second in Los Angeles with a 4:25.68, just a hair behind Dutchman Jenning Huizenga's 4:25.04. Phinney then clocked a 4:26.09 in the final to take the gold medal ahead of Huizenga, who rode a 4:28.24. And now, just three weeks into 2008, Phinney is a lock to return to Beijing in August - this time as a favorite competing for Olympic hardware.
This young man may not have had much time on the job, but he had the best possible start. His mother, Connie Carpenter, was a world pursuit champion and Olympic gold winner on the road in 1984. His father, Davis Phinney, was a multiple Tour de France stage winner and one of the most successful American cyclists of all time. In fact, their son's latest nickname is "All-Twitch," alluding to the inheritance of his father's legendary speed and power and his mother's Olympian endurance.
"It wasn't until I saw Taylor Phinney ride that I was struck by the profoundness of genetics," said Slipstream-Chipotle team physiologist Allen Lim. "That kid is on a whole other level at 17 years old. He's truly gifted. He's doing things right now, today, off the couch, that 90 percent of the world's population would never attain no matter how good the training. He's another species. He's neither slow-twitch nor fast-twitch, he's ‘all-twitch.'"
Summerhill and Phinney will split the 2008 road season between the U.S. national team program and the VMG-Felt-Slipstream development team, part of Jonathan Vaughters' Slipstream-Chipotle organization.
Is dad excited for his boy? Just watch this YouTube video shot from the elder Phinney's follow car (warning: may contain ecstatically objectionable language). Then read on - I spoke with Davis about his son's meteoric rise in the sport, and Taylor's relationship with Summerhill, after Slipstream-Chipotle's November 2007 team camp in Boulder, Colorado.
Neal Rogers: Can you reiterate some of what you were telling me when we recently chatted about the friendship between Taylor and Danny Summerhill?
Davis Phinney: It's been fortuitous for both of these guys to have someone that has great aspirations and that they are able to connect as friends and be supportive of each other as friends and travel around. Everybody needs a buddy. My buddy was Ron Kiefel. Without him I wouldn't have nearly gone as far as I did, and you could even perhaps say vice versa.
In my day we just did road riding. I did cyclocross but not seriously. I guess my point is that Danny and Taylor have some similar strengths on the bike, but clearly different strengths. Taylor is a good cyclocross rider, but Danny is a great cyclocross rider. They are both good road riders in general, but Taylor has this incredible capacity for the time trial, and on the track with the pursuit. I think he will evolve into a good all-around track rider. That's cool because they are not directly competitive, and they both can have their own niche -you are putting them on the cover for separate things, which is great.
NR: I've heard stories about the Colorado racing scene back in the day, when guys like Jonathan Vaughters, Bobby Julich and Scott Moninger were coming up, that it was a bit more competitive, that the rivalries were fierce. Conceivably, when Taylor and Danny race, there could be more of an adversarial relationship, but there doesn't seem to be any of that. Danny sleeps over at the Phinney household, and they seem to joke around all the time.
DP: To some degree, Taylor has been the upstart here. He has raced all of 18 months. He's come along at a meteoric rate, and that might be tough to take for some of his adversaries. To Danny's credit, he's a very competitive kid, too, which you have to be. He's not just, ‘Okay, great, Taylor's here, I'll just work for him.' He's fighting and trying to do his best as well.
I think more often than not Taylor is the one who assumes the position of being worked for in the peloton just because any time those guys go to a stage race and there is a time trial, like at the Tour l'Abitibi, Taylor has got it dialed in. But the neat thing is they drop that off the bike. They are pretty much at ease with each other.
NR: It was interesting, when I was doing the interview with the both of them, Danny was saying he doesn't go into races thinking he's going to win, and that Taylor does. Taylor was telling Danny that he needs to visualize himself winning more, and Danny agreed. It was interesting that Danny was comfortable admitting that.
DP: Taylor mentors Danny, sort of through what he's gotten from us. Everyone has different needs, and I think that is one thing Taylor really sees in Danny, is that sometimes when push comes to shove, Danny is uncertain, and you can't afford to be uncertain in a race. I think it's cool that they both see that, and that there are things they can gain from each other. Danny has an assuredness on the cyclocross bike that he doesn't totally have on the road bike. But he's a really good kid, and it's been neat to have them be able to hang together.
NR: Let's go back to Taylor's winning the world junior time trial championship in Mexico. I know he's had a lot of interest from European teams. In the span of eight months he went from an up-and-comer to the cover of VeloNews. It's been a crazy year for the whole family, I imagine.
DP: It's been an interesting ride with him. Both Connie and I have tried to be level-headed and calm about his progression. It's been tremendously exciting. Just watching him win worlds was fabulous. It was unexpected, and that's always a great thing. He didn't have a good [road] nationals, and I almost knew he wasn't going to have a good nationals, by intent, and by the situation we had put him in a lull in his season so he could build up for worlds. But when you come into an event where everyone is really looking at you, you just have to suffer some low points and see that you're going to get past them.
When nationals came and went, I was thinking, ‘Ah, jeez.' But then he went up to Abitibi, and he didn't kill it but he did enough to win. And then of course he went down and just crushed it in Mexico. What has been wonderful to see is his evolution, and perhaps you could see this in your interview. He's got a calmness, and a maturity. He doesn't just blather on, he doesn't boast. He's just calmly confident, I think way beyond his years; that has been really gratifying. As Connie and I would say, if he didn't go one victory further, he's had an amazing run, and he's got it. He's got the keys to being successful in life and living a good life. And that's, in a lot of senses, what you hope your kids will get out of anything, sport, education, whatnot. It's been a great ride. I think it will continue. At this point there's almost nothing he does that will end up surprising me. He's just sort of a phenom.
NR: When we spoke about Taylor six months ago, you were working as his de-facto manager, not just in terms of taking him to races and giving him advice, but also in planning his future career. What is it like when ProTour teams like T-Mobile or Saunier Duval are suddenly ringing him? He will be 18 in 2008, and ready to make some decisions.
DP: That's an interesting question. It was a little bit unexpected, the crush when he won worlds, and the interest. It took a little while for the smoke to clear. But the nice thing is that he is still a junior next year. We didn't have to make these significant choices in terms of where he would go and what he would do. He's quite content and comfortable with the [VMG-Felt-Slipstream development] team here. He and Danny are staying together. Jonathan reached out to him after he won worlds and he basically told him he wanted to create this U23 program to keep Taylor and Danny in the fold.
That has turned out to be really a wonderful occurrence, because when the Slipstream pros came, and Taylor met David Millar and Magnus Backstedt, and hung with these guys, I could see that this is where he's going to get his mentorship. In some senses he is past my domain. I honestly don't have the time that I used to. I am really focused on my foundation, and Parkinson's, and doing what I can within that realm while I am still healthy enough to get out and travel and speak. So I've stepped a few steps to the side from Taylor.
Connie has been really pivotal with the track because she is the one who was the world pursuit champion. She's really embraced his track career, and sort of orchestrated, behind the scenes, what's happened with that, which has gone really favorably. So in that sense he's getting great guidance right now. And the trick with someone like Taylor, not to equate him directly with Lance (Armstrong) or Greg LeMond, but he is something relatively special and a lot of people want to get involved with that. It's sort of hard to see who are the right people to give him the right support.
But I feel really good about the way things are going right now. His connection to Millar and Backstedt is fabulous. David was wonderful when they rode together for a few hours, and they talked the whole time. And Magnus was pivotal - they were riding together every day on the track in Sydney, they went out to L.A. and rode together in L.A. That's been crucial.
Can you imagine, here you're 17, you're hanging out with two guys you would love to emulate? Millar's won the Tour de France prologue and worn the yellow jersey and Magnus has won Paris-Roubaix, which is Taylor's favorite race. How cool is that?
I have his parent's Cycling training book
Mr. Rogers Neighborhood: Davis Phinney on Taylor's success, future
By Neal Rogers
VeloNews senior writer
Filed: January 22, 2008
Taylor Phinney has come a long way in a short time
photo: Don Karle
Taylor Phinney's pursuit victory at the UCI World Cup in Los Angeles last weekend sure makes us look smart for putting him and Danny Summerhill on our awards-issue cover.
Thanks, Taylor.
We gave the 17-year-old Phinney and 18-year-old Summerhill our "juniors of the year" award for their 2007 accomplishments, which included Summerhill's silver medal at the world junior cyclocross championship and Phinney's gold at the world junior time trial championship - the first-ever junior world title in that discipline.
And Phinney didn't waste any time getting there. In only his second year of racing after winning 23 races in 2006, he began the 2007 season with a virtual tie for the overall win in the Category 2 Tour of the Gila, racing against men twice his age. He next took the overall at July's Tour l'Abitibi, then shocked the cycling community in October by winning the national pursuit title at his first-ever velodrome competition.
On November 30, competing in his first UCI track World Cup, Phinney finished ninth in the men's 4km individual pursuit with a time of 4:29.118 - six seconds faster than his time at nationals. One week later, at the Beijing World Cup, Phinney finished fourth, setting another PR of 4:24.364 and losing in the final for the bronze by just 0.109 second.
So perhaps it shouldn't have surprised anyone last weekend when Phinney qualified second in Los Angeles with a 4:25.68, just a hair behind Dutchman Jenning Huizenga's 4:25.04. Phinney then clocked a 4:26.09 in the final to take the gold medal ahead of Huizenga, who rode a 4:28.24. And now, just three weeks into 2008, Phinney is a lock to return to Beijing in August - this time as a favorite competing for Olympic hardware.
This young man may not have had much time on the job, but he had the best possible start. His mother, Connie Carpenter, was a world pursuit champion and Olympic gold winner on the road in 1984. His father, Davis Phinney, was a multiple Tour de France stage winner and one of the most successful American cyclists of all time. In fact, their son's latest nickname is "All-Twitch," alluding to the inheritance of his father's legendary speed and power and his mother's Olympian endurance.
"It wasn't until I saw Taylor Phinney ride that I was struck by the profoundness of genetics," said Slipstream-Chipotle team physiologist Allen Lim. "That kid is on a whole other level at 17 years old. He's truly gifted. He's doing things right now, today, off the couch, that 90 percent of the world's population would never attain no matter how good the training. He's another species. He's neither slow-twitch nor fast-twitch, he's ‘all-twitch.'"
Summerhill and Phinney will split the 2008 road season between the U.S. national team program and the VMG-Felt-Slipstream development team, part of Jonathan Vaughters' Slipstream-Chipotle organization.
Is dad excited for his boy? Just watch this YouTube video shot from the elder Phinney's follow car (warning: may contain ecstatically objectionable language). Then read on - I spoke with Davis about his son's meteoric rise in the sport, and Taylor's relationship with Summerhill, after Slipstream-Chipotle's November 2007 team camp in Boulder, Colorado.
Neal Rogers: Can you reiterate some of what you were telling me when we recently chatted about the friendship between Taylor and Danny Summerhill?
Davis Phinney: It's been fortuitous for both of these guys to have someone that has great aspirations and that they are able to connect as friends and be supportive of each other as friends and travel around. Everybody needs a buddy. My buddy was Ron Kiefel. Without him I wouldn't have nearly gone as far as I did, and you could even perhaps say vice versa.
In my day we just did road riding. I did cyclocross but not seriously. I guess my point is that Danny and Taylor have some similar strengths on the bike, but clearly different strengths. Taylor is a good cyclocross rider, but Danny is a great cyclocross rider. They are both good road riders in general, but Taylor has this incredible capacity for the time trial, and on the track with the pursuit. I think he will evolve into a good all-around track rider. That's cool because they are not directly competitive, and they both can have their own niche -you are putting them on the cover for separate things, which is great.
NR: I've heard stories about the Colorado racing scene back in the day, when guys like Jonathan Vaughters, Bobby Julich and Scott Moninger were coming up, that it was a bit more competitive, that the rivalries were fierce. Conceivably, when Taylor and Danny race, there could be more of an adversarial relationship, but there doesn't seem to be any of that. Danny sleeps over at the Phinney household, and they seem to joke around all the time.
DP: To some degree, Taylor has been the upstart here. He has raced all of 18 months. He's come along at a meteoric rate, and that might be tough to take for some of his adversaries. To Danny's credit, he's a very competitive kid, too, which you have to be. He's not just, ‘Okay, great, Taylor's here, I'll just work for him.' He's fighting and trying to do his best as well.
I think more often than not Taylor is the one who assumes the position of being worked for in the peloton just because any time those guys go to a stage race and there is a time trial, like at the Tour l'Abitibi, Taylor has got it dialed in. But the neat thing is they drop that off the bike. They are pretty much at ease with each other.
NR: It was interesting, when I was doing the interview with the both of them, Danny was saying he doesn't go into races thinking he's going to win, and that Taylor does. Taylor was telling Danny that he needs to visualize himself winning more, and Danny agreed. It was interesting that Danny was comfortable admitting that.
DP: Taylor mentors Danny, sort of through what he's gotten from us. Everyone has different needs, and I think that is one thing Taylor really sees in Danny, is that sometimes when push comes to shove, Danny is uncertain, and you can't afford to be uncertain in a race. I think it's cool that they both see that, and that there are things they can gain from each other. Danny has an assuredness on the cyclocross bike that he doesn't totally have on the road bike. But he's a really good kid, and it's been neat to have them be able to hang together.
NR: Let's go back to Taylor's winning the world junior time trial championship in Mexico. I know he's had a lot of interest from European teams. In the span of eight months he went from an up-and-comer to the cover of VeloNews. It's been a crazy year for the whole family, I imagine.
DP: It's been an interesting ride with him. Both Connie and I have tried to be level-headed and calm about his progression. It's been tremendously exciting. Just watching him win worlds was fabulous. It was unexpected, and that's always a great thing. He didn't have a good [road] nationals, and I almost knew he wasn't going to have a good nationals, by intent, and by the situation we had put him in a lull in his season so he could build up for worlds. But when you come into an event where everyone is really looking at you, you just have to suffer some low points and see that you're going to get past them.
When nationals came and went, I was thinking, ‘Ah, jeez.' But then he went up to Abitibi, and he didn't kill it but he did enough to win. And then of course he went down and just crushed it in Mexico. What has been wonderful to see is his evolution, and perhaps you could see this in your interview. He's got a calmness, and a maturity. He doesn't just blather on, he doesn't boast. He's just calmly confident, I think way beyond his years; that has been really gratifying. As Connie and I would say, if he didn't go one victory further, he's had an amazing run, and he's got it. He's got the keys to being successful in life and living a good life. And that's, in a lot of senses, what you hope your kids will get out of anything, sport, education, whatnot. It's been a great ride. I think it will continue. At this point there's almost nothing he does that will end up surprising me. He's just sort of a phenom.
NR: When we spoke about Taylor six months ago, you were working as his de-facto manager, not just in terms of taking him to races and giving him advice, but also in planning his future career. What is it like when ProTour teams like T-Mobile or Saunier Duval are suddenly ringing him? He will be 18 in 2008, and ready to make some decisions.
DP: That's an interesting question. It was a little bit unexpected, the crush when he won worlds, and the interest. It took a little while for the smoke to clear. But the nice thing is that he is still a junior next year. We didn't have to make these significant choices in terms of where he would go and what he would do. He's quite content and comfortable with the [VMG-Felt-Slipstream development] team here. He and Danny are staying together. Jonathan reached out to him after he won worlds and he basically told him he wanted to create this U23 program to keep Taylor and Danny in the fold.
That has turned out to be really a wonderful occurrence, because when the Slipstream pros came, and Taylor met David Millar and Magnus Backstedt, and hung with these guys, I could see that this is where he's going to get his mentorship. In some senses he is past my domain. I honestly don't have the time that I used to. I am really focused on my foundation, and Parkinson's, and doing what I can within that realm while I am still healthy enough to get out and travel and speak. So I've stepped a few steps to the side from Taylor.
Connie has been really pivotal with the track because she is the one who was the world pursuit champion. She's really embraced his track career, and sort of orchestrated, behind the scenes, what's happened with that, which has gone really favorably. So in that sense he's getting great guidance right now. And the trick with someone like Taylor, not to equate him directly with Lance (Armstrong) or Greg LeMond, but he is something relatively special and a lot of people want to get involved with that. It's sort of hard to see who are the right people to give him the right support.
But I feel really good about the way things are going right now. His connection to Millar and Backstedt is fabulous. David was wonderful when they rode together for a few hours, and they talked the whole time. And Magnus was pivotal - they were riding together every day on the track in Sydney, they went out to L.A. and rode together in L.A. That's been crucial.
Can you imagine, here you're 17, you're hanging out with two guys you would love to emulate? Millar's won the Tour de France prologue and worn the yellow jersey and Magnus has won Paris-Roubaix, which is Taylor's favorite race. How cool is that?