“…all the way through, and then I go full. And I win the Worlds.”
The journalists in the room freeze for a moment. Unlike the other, older riders who walk into the room with maybe a ‘Hello’, sit down and wait for the questions, 22-year-old Taylor Phinney and 24-year-old Tejay van Garderen are already joking around the moment they walk in the door. It turns out Taylor has a bit of a reputation for Philippe Gilbert impressions. Apparently we were just on the receiving end of one.
“That was pretty much like the original,” the Dutch journalist says with a smile. BMC’s young superstar pair, two of the riders frequently hailed as ‘the future of American cycling’, are still going with their quirky two-man stand-up routine.
“Nibali…I don’t know about bikes, but there he is.”
This is clearly going to be a different sort of interview.
We settle down into some – mostly – serious questions, and Tejay leans back in his seat and stretches his legs for a few minutes while Taylor takes the heat. After his performance in the time trial at last year’s World Championships in Limburg, where Taylor came a close second in a competition that left winner Tony Martin momentarily unconscious from exhaustion, there’s a lot of interest in his time trialling ability and his relationship with the king of the discipline, Fabian Cancellara. Taylor says that his experience racing last year’s Giro d’Italia and an off-season that has been for once untouched by injury will be key in developing his skills. “I had two knee injuries in the last off-season and the off-season before that and this off-season I’ve been fine, just training and focussing on what I need to do,” the Boulder, Colorado native explains. “I think being healthy and also just a bit of extra racing and more concentrated training will get me to the place I need to be to beat [Cancellara].”
Taylor is full of warm words for the four-time world champion, who is now giving up time trialling to focus on other things. “Well, he has what, four world championships, Olympic gold medal, not much more you can do from there. I’ll see him in the Classics and I’d consider us relatively good friends already. He’s definitely been an idol and a hero in my career for a long time, ever since I started racing.”
But BMC’s youngster can’t stay serious for long.
“I kind of wouldn’t mind testing myself against somebody like that, that pedigree and that past. It’d be cool if he could focus a little bit more on time-trialling and I could…” something between innocence and mischief appears on Taylor’s face, “see how I match up against him.”
Jokes aside, Taylor’s also the first to acknowledge that he understands Cancellara’s choice to step away from their demanding discipline.
“He’s getting to a different point in his career than I am. And time trialling sucks a lot. It’s really hard, you know. It’s like an hour of pain, why would you want to do that to yourself?” he says with a totally straight face while everyone chuckles. At just 22, the American already has the power to keep his audience rapt, the roomful of journalists too busy listening to him to pose questions to Tejay. “I want to do that to myself so that I can achieve the results that Fabian has, but I can totally understand that once you get those results that you move on.”
Taylor compares Cancellara’s focus-change to his once-beloved discipline on the track, the individual pursuit, which he abandoned in favour of full-time road racing at the end of 2010. Of course, he tells the story a little differently. “I won the World Championships, they took it out of the Olympic program, and then I was like ‘Wow, this is a terrible four minutes of my life. I’m gonna go ahead and focus on something else now.’”
Tejay smiles along with the rest of the room at his younger teammate’s wisecracking, and the focus turns to the older rider and the relationship between the two – are they friends? “Not really!” he replies with a broad grin. Though more laid-back and quiet than Taylor, it seems the comedy act is not entirely one-sided. “Taylor and I are really close friends and it’s good to have a good friend to hang out with and another American to kinda, you know, do some shit-talking with,” Tejay explains with a smile.
The two are also frequent training partners when they’re both at their stateside base of Boulder. “We’re good for each other, we push each other. We have different strengths but they overlap in a coupla different areas, like in a time trial.” Tejay has a calm, earnest way of talking that makes him easy to listen to, and he’s eloquent for a 24-year-old, always able to say precisely what he means.
“Who’s better?” someone calls out. Apparently Taylor can’t resist. “You can’t ask that question!” he pretends to chastise the amused journalist, leaving Tejay to clarify the answer. “We have different strengths,” Tejay says simply. “I would never beat him on the cobbles of Paris-Roubaix but I don’t think he would ever beat me up Alpe d’Huez. But if you put us in a time trial, that could be where we overlap a little bit. In a one-day time trial I think he’s a little bit better, but in a time trial at the end of a three-week stage race then I might be a bit better.”
The questions turn to the state of American cycling in the wake of the Armstrong affair, but more particularly the admission of the pair’s former BMC teammate George Hincapie that he was involved in organised doping. Taylor makes light of the situation, as always, but points out that ‘…anybody who’s tuned into the cycling world kind of knew what was coming, in a way.’ For once Tejay seems to be struggling to find a diplomatic way to express his thoughts.
“It wasn’t a shock,” he acknowledges, “but it was, it was definitely…it was definitely, uh, made a lot of headlines, but like Taylor said, we kinda knew it was coming.”
But Taylor isn’t so light-hearted when someone suggests that Americans have been the ‘bad guys’ of the peloton for the last decade. He jumps on the question with an unusual aggressiveness. “I don’t know if it’s just the American riders being the bad guys,” he replies moderately, to more laughter, but he’s quick to assert that past riders are also responsible for the present open state of cycling and not just to blame for its mistakes.
“We’re certainly proud to represent America, we’re proud to be where we’re at. Cycling had its problems in the past, but we stepped into a clean environment, and that was due to people from the past,” Taylor says strongly. “We definitely take that privilege seriously, to make sure the sport never relapses, and we’re always able to go to sleep at night knowing that none of our tests are going to show up positive and that all of our results were achieved in the correct way.” Despite this attitude, Taylor is still critical of the journalist’s original premise, and calls him out on the oblique accusation. “To say that we’re the good guys and they’re the bad guys, I don’t think that’s really fair.”
Taylor has also earned a reputation for being outspoken on the topic of doping, especially after an open interview about the use of legal medications late last year. He’s drawn a lot of interest in the wake of that interview, as it’s unusual for riders to talk so openly of doping. “It’s important for me to get my thoughts out there and my preparation for races out there,” he says of his willingness to open up on the subject. “For me that interview was just to kind of shine a light into a dark place and show how my approach is completely different than all these things that you read; Tyler Hamilton’s book and the USADA reports.”
Taylor has no compunction in being open with his views around his teammates, either. “We have a pretty strict team policy as it is, and I think a lot of people share the same sort of feelings as I do, at least on my team and in my inner circle. I’m very comfortable with what happens here at BMC and proud of what we can achieve.”
While Taylor sits back for a moment, having satisfied the journalists’ questions, the focus moves back to Tejay and in particular his 6th-placed Tour de France ride of last year, which left many wondering if BMC team leader Cadel Evans was still fit to be the Tour team leader. Tejay is quick to assure everyone that Cadel is still in charge, but he has his own ideas on what his role will be. “I think I’ll be given a bit of a free role to ride my own race,” Tejay says. “Where I’m at right now in my development is that there were climbers that were really good and I was just trying my best to follow. I was just following the best wheel I could, and sometimes that was with the leaders, sometimes it was in a group behind the leaders, like a couple of minutes back.”
To Tejay, this means that it will be his job to be Evans’ lieutenant and not his rival, but this doesn’t preclude him from having his own goals as well. “I can help [Evans] out, but that doesn’t mean that once the finish line comes that I have to hit my brakes and lose five minutes and then cross the line. That doesn’t mean I’m not allowed to get a result,” he emphasises, though he knows that riding for himself may not always be an option. “The only scenario I see would be if Cadel gets dropped and I have to wait for him, which I did in last year’s Tour. I don’t think I’m gonna be called upon to do that, so I think I’ll help Cadel as much as I can from off the front of the race.”
As we all stand and prepare to move rooms at the end of the interview, one of the European journalists feels the need to ask Tejay one last question.
“Have you already dreamed about the yellow jersey?”
Tejay smiles and replies without blinking. “I’ve dreamed about it since I was nine years old.”
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