A familiar name is back in the velodrome—Taylor Phinney, former WorldTour pro and recently…mostly a gravel racer, DJ and all-around cool dude. But those things will change shortly (he can still be a cool dude, just one training six hours a day for team pursuit).
“Never in a million years could I have predicted this… but here we are,” began his Instagram post.
That’s how Phinney put it, and it pretty much sets the tone. What started as a simple return to racing — gravel, low pressure, see how the legs feel — has drifted into something else entirely. His words: “the old horse still has some kick.”
He’s calling it “COMEBACK3000,” which gives you an idea of how seriously he’s taking it… and also not taking it. At first, the Olympic angle wasn’t even real. He says he laughed when the idea was floated. But between encouragement from USA Cycling and some steady backing from his wife, Kasia Niewiadoma-Phinney, it stopped being a joke.
Now it’s a goal.
The twist is where this is all heading. Not the road. Not gravel. The track.
That’s where Phinney first made his name, long before his WorldTour years. It’s also where things unraveled a bit: the individual pursuit, his event, dropped from the Olympic program, pushing him away from the velodrome altogether. He moved on. Or thought he had.
Lately, though, the U.S. men’s team pursuit squad has been building something, and that’s pulled him back in. Not as a nostalgia act, but as someone trying to contribute.
He admits there’s a gap. The gym work, the position, even just getting comfortable in a TT setup again — it’s been, what, seven years? But after a first camp, he sounds… pleasantly surprised. He slotted in better than expected, especially for someone who’s only been properly back training since November.
More than anything, he keeps coming back to the feel of it. The speed, sure, but also the group.
“Awesome to be back in a team environment,” he wrote.
There’s no guarantee any of this ends with the Olympics in L.A. He knows that. But he’s in the mix now — chasing World Cups, trying to help push the program forward, seeing how far this goes.
Not planned. Definitely not predictable. But it’s happening.
Phinney had a helluva run in the pro ranks. Remember the polka dot jersey at the Tour? The silver at the TT worlds? Also, a couple of rainbow jerseys in the individual pursuit, to boot. Since retiring, he’s been busy on the trails, and Instagram, and droppin’ tracks and stuff as a DJ.
Plus, his wife just happens to be one of the greatest female cyclists in the world—Niewiadoma-Phinney—so he will have a great training partner for all those road miles team pursuiters need (he takes after his father, clearly).