![\"Taylor](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/taylorphinney-2-69df7919434b0.jpg@webp.webp\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
“He doesn\u2019t do anything if he\u2019s not ready to give it 100%, so I think it’s great. I\u2019m rooting for him. I think it\u2019s a hell of a story. And I was always sad about the way he ended his career. I think this could be a bit of redemption for him.”<\/p>\n
Rio shattered his dream of coming back<\/p>\n
Despite his brutal injuries at the 2014 Nationals which caused him to sit out an entire year, Phinney managed to put himself together for the 2016 Rio Olympics, but by then, he wasn’t the same rider anymore. Phinney put his all into the time trial, but the result, a 22nd place, caused something to die inside of the American, Van Garderen noticed:<\/p>\n
“Ever since the Brazil Olympics, it seemed like Taylor was a bit over it. He was able to come back from his injury, and he was still racing for BMC, so we were still teammates at the time. I remember one of his first races back, he won a stage of the USA Pro challenge and I thought, ‘Oh my God, Taylor just went through this horrendous thing and now it\u2019s just going to be a thing of the past, he\u2019s going to get over it, and he\u2019s going to still be Taylor Phinney.'”<\/p>\n
“But it wasn\u2019t as simple as that. There were still follow-up operations, and built-up scar tissue, and lots of chronic pain. He really went full gas for the Brazil Olympics, he trained so hard for it, and it was a disaster. You can\u2019t fault him for it, because it just wasn\u2019t his kind of course. But after that, I think he just lost motivation. He never really went all in for anything anymore. But now I think he\u2019s found something that he\u2019s like, ‘Alright, I\u2019m willing to go all in for this.'”<\/p>\n
Chance for a better ‘goodbye’<\/p>\n
Regarding his former teammates’ prospect for the 2028 Games, Van Garderen is optimistic: “He\u2019s obviously kept in good shape, and he rides his bike all the time. He\u2019s probably been riding more mountain bikes or gravel, so whether or not that translates into the explosive nature of the team pursuit, I have no idea. But he\u2019s such a talent that I think if he puts his mind to something, he\u2019ll do it.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Taylor Phinney at the time trial World Championships<\/p>\n
“I was teammates with him again the year he ended, and I think the Tour of California in 2019 was basically his last race,” Van Garderen said. “It was a bit sad, because he didn\u2019t finish that race. He got dropped and then time cut. That was the last of Taylor, and for such an amazingly talented rider and such a good guy, I would have liked to see it end differently for him. Maybe this is his chance.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" “He doesn\u2019t do anything if he\u2019s not ready to give it 100%, so I think it’s great.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":665215,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[569],"tags":[64,63,784,85,295329,215547,35073],"class_list":["post-665214","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-cycling","tag-sports","tag-taylor-phinney","tag-tejay-van-garderen","tag-track-cycling"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/665214","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=665214"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/665214\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/665215"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=665214"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=665214"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=665214"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}