Armstrong describes Phinney as 'the future'

Boulder cyclist on new under-23 team

By Clay Latimer, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published September 26, 2008 at 12:27 a.m.

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Phinney didn't medal at the Beijing Games.

Returning from the Beijing Olympics in August, Taylor Phinney felt mentally and physically exhausted from his long breakthrough season.

But the 18-year-old Boulder cyclist caught his second wind in Aspen a couple of weeks later.

He also found a new teammate - Lance Armstrong, the seven-time winner of the Tour de France and a longtime friend of the Phinney family.

"Taylor was able to go up and train with Lance, and it just kind of snapped him out of his post-Olympic funk - it gave him a renewed purpose," said his mother, Connie Carpenter-Phinney, who in 1984 became the first woman to win an Olympic cycling event.

Citing the family connection, Taylor took the stage with Armstrong on Thursday in Las Vegas, where Armstrong announced he would be supporting an under-23 racing team based around Phinney.

And after a three-year retirement, Armstrong, 37, has joined the Astana team.

"Lance has given so much to our family over the years," Carpenter- Phinney said.

"This is just the next level of that. He stepped away from cycling, and now he has found a way to come back to cycling and honor his commitment to cycling and his legacy to the sport.

"The hardest age for a cyclist is 18 to 20. That's really the focus of the team - just making that leap.

"It's a huge leap - it's where you need your best coaching and best direction.

"Taylor is not the next Lance Armstrong. I remember when Lance was 18 and everybody said he was the next Greg LeMond. And I said, 'That's not right. He's Lance Armstrong.' "

Taylor's father, Davis, won a bronze medal in the team time trial at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, captured two stage victories in the Tour de France, a U.S. Pro title and was a member of the pioneering 7-Eleven team.

Phinney, who was diagnosed in 2000 with early-onset Parkinson's disease, introduced his son to Armstrong at the 2004 Tour de France.

After that meeting, young Taylor took a paint brush and wrote "Lance is my hero" on the road that Armstrong would pass on the next day.

"Taylor is the future of American cycling," Armstrong said Wednesday in New York. "This is what the sport needs."

Added Carpenter-Phinney: "I think personality is important in sports."Cycling needs that. We've suffered through so many public events lately."

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