Four years ago Taylor Phinney had to wait four months after securing an Olympic berth before his first Olympic experience. Friday’s wait to see if he made his second Olympic team seemed like a lot longer.
Turns out, the wait was worth it. Phinney, the 22-year-old Boulder High grad and the rising star of Boulder’s family of cycling, made the U.S. Olympic team, USA Cycling announced Friday. He will be part of the United States’ five-man road racing team and be the lone American entry in the individual time trial in London.
“The last couple of days have been a little more stressful,” said Phinney from his family’s home in Boulder. “This morning I woke up, thought I’d get the announcement in the morning and had to wait until the afternoon.
“But I’m excited. It’s a huge honor to be selected for both the road race and the time trial.”
The U.S. road race team will be young but with a big taste of Colorado. Joining Phinney will be sprint specialist Tyler Farrar, 28, of Wenatchee, Wash., and Boulder-based Team Garmin-Barracuda, and Timothy Duggan, 29, who was born in Boulder and now races for Italy-based Liquigas-Cannondale.
The two other spots are taken by Chris Horner, 30, of Bend, Ore., and RadioShack-Nissan-Trek, and Tejay van Garderen, 24, of Tacoma, Wash., and Phinney’s teammate on the California-based BMC Racing.
The mountain bike team was also announced. Besides Fort Collins-resident Todd Wells of Durango was selected for the men’s team. with the other two spots coming out of the Olympic trials, currently underway in Chula Vista, Calif.
Phinney has been one of Colorado’s best running cycling stories for more than four years. He’s the son of former U.S. pro cycling star Davis Phinney and Connie Carpenter-Phinney, who won an Olympic gold medal in the 1984 road race.
He switched to his parents’ event of choice after finishing seventh in the individual pursuit on the track four years ago at the Beijing Olympics.
“This is a little bit of a second chance after the Beijing Olympics,” Taylor said. “Seventh place in pursuit wasn’t up to my satisfaction. So this kind of feels a little bit of a Round 2.”
USA Cycling chose Phinney for the time trial over David Zabriskie, 33, who has won seven national time trial titles but will also compete for Garmin-Barracuda in the Tour de France next month.
Ironically, this week Phinney has trained with Zabriskie in Boulder at a mini-training camp held by Garmin-Barracuda’s Christian VandeVelde, a former Boulder resident.
“I think he was a little bit bummed,” Phinney said of Zabriskie. “I think honestly Dave might be a better time trialer than I am, but he doesn’t have the leeway that I do of being able to solely focus on the time trial in July. He’ll be in the Tour and riding in the front. That takes a lot out of you when you do duties like that.
“We’re both competitors and friends. If they’d selected him I would’ve been happy for him.”
John Henderson: 303-954-1299, twitter.com/johnhendersonDP or jhenderson@denverpost.com
