Thursday, September 23, 2010

Taylor Phinney Signs with BMC Racing Team

Lance Armstrong a few years back pushed to start a development team called Trek-Livestrong.  He openly said that in many ways it was to build a team around Taylor Phinney, a guy who's potential Armstrong has openly praised.

It has worked well for Armstrong and Phinney.  Phinney has won the U23 Paris-Roubaix two years in a row, has already won stages competing at the top level, and has now won the US time trial championship.  

It has always been assumed that when Phinney went up to the top level full time next year it would be with Team RadioShack, Armstrong's team, but about a month ago this notion was questioned when it became known that Phinney had met with BMC team director Jim Ochowicz.

Suddenly Phinney had offers coming in from quite a few teams, and at the same time his mentor at RadioShack, Armstrong, quit communicating with him.  At least that's what we found at from Phinney when he announced yesterday that in fact he would be with BMC next season. 

The main reason Phinney gave for this decision was stability.  Phinney dreams of winning gold in the 2012 Olympics and wants to have the same group of people working with him over the next two years.  RadioShack is only committed through 2011. 

We at the Heath Post will be watching Phinney closely next week when he represents the United States in the World Championships.  He is the favorite to win the U23 time trial. 

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