It’s just like riding a bike, the saying goes.However, 16 long years had passed since Taylor Phinney last went round a velodrome on a track machine. Staring at the cutting-edge Canyon belonging to teammate Ashlin Barry, with its aggressive aerodynamic position and wind-cheating front forks barely wider than the disc wheel inside them, he doubted how he was even going to get on the thing.‘Am I about to lose it right now and crash?’ he thought. ‘Should I put a helmet on? Am I going to end this whole comeback right now?’Then he was off, pushing down the pedals, turning back the years and setting off on a return to the sport that he had not seen coming.Phinney was an American cycling prodigy, possessing a raw power which made him a contender in time-trials and bunch sprints. Son of Tour de France stage winner Davis Phinney and Olympic champion rider Connie Carpenter, he won two individual pursuit world titles before stepping away from the track in 2010, months after his favored event was removed from the Olympic program.On the road, he was a junior and under-23 world time-trial champion who went on to win stages at the Giro d’Italia, the Eneco Tour and the Tour of California, cementing his reputation as one of the sport’s most promising young riders.However, Phinney suffered a career-altering crash at the 2014 USA Pro Cycling Professional Road Race, fracturing the tibia and severing the patellar tendon in his left leg. Even after a lengthy rehabilitation, he could not rediscover the same levels of performance.Retiring from road racing at the end of 2019, he immersed himself in a happy retirement, creating art in his studio, DJing and supporting his wife, 2024 Tour de France Femmes winner Kasia Niewiadoma-Phinney.Yet there is still a competitive instinct in this “old underdog”. Following a message from an old associate, the three-time Olympian is making his bid to return to team-pursuit competition on the track for Team USA, with the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles firmly in mind.“It feels good, it feels sort of like a movie,” Phinney tells The Athletic. “I’ve just got to put my head down, do the work and get the competitive fire going again, which has been dormant since before I retired.”