Fair enough that the women's peloton is talented and deep. But how do you know Taylor is not just as strong. All of you seem threatened that she can hop between tri and cycling and beat women who specialize in cycling at TT. If you look on the men's side, generally guys who are lightweight and do well in TT's also do well on long races/stages with lots of elevation. This is not new to anyone.

Mastering staying up on a bike in a group is easier than developing the watts per kilo that Taylor has. She's got the wide spectrum for being able to run 33 min off the lead bike group in Yokohama to 41 min ITT at US Trials to outsplitting half the men on the bike in Oceanside over 2:18 to a podium in Kona over 8+hrs.

The question is really what is her 10-30 second power and whether she can comfortably conserve energy in a pack. They do pack racing in ITU so it should not be a massive stretch (and i get that ITU packs are not huge, but mostly neither is an Olympic games road race).

I would imaging that most US team coaches are salivating by the prospect of just being gifted this massive talent from triathlon. She beat all the women they had on deck, 5 days after running a 33 min 10km off the bike and then doing a 14 hrs time change from Yokohma to US East coast (and likely a 24 hrs door to door journey) and was good enough to dust everyone who showed up who were trying for Olympic spots.

The salivation is not because of licking their lips, it's because of knashing their teeth: their girls got a beating (albeit one by only a few seconds) and critically the winner got an Olympic ticket, in a USAC unsophisticated selection policy. And that athlete will not be racing the RR (a loss to USA cycling in visual terms: will make no difference to Dygert's chances of medalling (RR)).
I reckon (you correctly say we "don't know") Knibb is just as strong as the cyclists in the second decile of those riding the road race. Her success in the TT a few days before her primary race (31 July) will be fascinating. I cannot imagine that a hard TT a few days before the most important race of her triathlon life is optimal preparation. I wonder what her previous coach thinks?
Knibb has enough roadcraft to cope albeit inefficiently with the reduced size of peloton we can expect in Paris (as you say) but her positioning (because of no experience) would (this is all hypothetical) probably mean she'd miss the split. At least there would be no transitions to leak 10s of seconds on. Her tactic could be just to glue herself to (say) Kopecky's wheel but she's not up to the shoulder fight which would be required and I suspect (to which you allude) her 10-30 second power is not enough when (say) Kopecky opens up.

As I said, I'm not speculating on it. I don't know if she is as strong or even stronger. I don't have any good information to understand how she might fare in a road race like that. I don't know who feels threatened; that's a weird remark. I personally love athletes who can hop back and forth between sports. I think they get the best of both worlds. Cam Wurf has the best race calendar in endurance sports IMO. I digress. There's a lot of hypothetical on a race that to my knowledge, Taylor hasn't commented on whether she has interest in racing. That I would like to know.

agreed with the sentiments here:
Usa cycling's selection policy has (had) the advantage of being objective and clearcut (no coaches selection subjectivity)
but
the disadvantage of taking more than just one result into account (I could add it doesn't take into account a cyclist having ANY other goals than tt and rr which are separated by a week - hard to fault usa cycling for that - that couldn't have been too easy to predict (though T Knibb's 4th last year might have said otherwise). (keeping the hypotheticals going - Dygert could have raced the tt if she wanted eliminate the auto pick for the winner). I haven't looked at track cycling - I hope Dygert;s schedule isn't too complex (or Kopecky's).

to her credit Faulkner added an impressive road race win to her 11 second tt loss. I suspect Faulkner may not have as much tt bike experience as Knibb. there seem to be very few itts in womens pro tour races. I hope her trade team gave her solid assistance in getting her best result despite what i sense as the itt not being too valued in the pro tour calendar.

I completely understand Knibb not even pretending to be interested in the road race. Still, understanding it doesn't keep me from wishing we could see what we're missing by not seeing her race the likes of Kopecky, Vollering, Vos, Niewa, etc... I really think it would have been cool to see if she could finish front group with Edwards and Faulkner yesterday (or even better). But alas, that wouldn't make her better at achieving her goals in Paris.

I consider this horse deceased and sufficiently beaten, such that I'm ready to root for Knibb and Dygert in the TT, and to hope the track team selection goes well especially considering the world champs (Valente, Dygert) we have already (I'm a Faulkner fan - so I'll root for her but ideally just giving it a go will hopefully make this already strong team even stronger).

Hi Rick. Be wary venturing out from the bike racing perma-thread. That crowd is much friendlier than the degenerates out here.....

I am going to say something that will be very unpopular with this crowd. I think Taylor Knibb should race the RR. Why? Because she can. And because this is the one and only time in her life that she will have this opportunity, and she is at peak fitness, as 30mph TT will attest. And because 30 years from now when she is looking back at her career and her 25yo self at the peak of her abilities, she will regret having sacrificed her one and only opportunity to race head-to-head on the road in the Olympics against the best in order to be more rested for a 15 minute anaerobic effort.

For what? So that she is at 100% instead of 99% for a 15 minute sprint relay event the following day, an event for which she already has competed and won an olympic medal, and for which her nation is highly unlikely to win a medal whether or not she is 99%, 100%, or absent from the team.

She is a racer first and foremost. She raced Kona for no reason but that she wanted to race it and the opportunity and gap in her race schedule was there. No one believed that racing IM distance Kona unacclimatized to the heat on ITU and 70.3 training was prudent, but she did it because she was fit and wanted to.

She isn't going to have this opportunity again. Unless she is concerned of crashing out or potential embarrassment of getting shelled out the back, both of which would be unlikely considering her ITU experience and watts/kg power, I think she should just say "I'm a racer. I want to race. I'll do the MTR also the next day unless USAT wants to sub me out because they think I can't handle a 15 minute sprint effort one day after a bike race"

Yes, I will get thoroughly savaged for this opinion. And I am biased in that I'd love to see how it plays out, but even looking at it dispassionately, and I think a racer should race.

Ding ding! I agree. Of course, the flip side is, you don't get to be where she is by saying yes to every tasty opportunity that comes your way. This would be a hard call if I were in her shoes, but maybe that's the reason I'm not in her shoes.

last chance? she has plenty of time to do one or two or even 3 more olympics, focusing on cycling after Paris and be at the top of the game. She can achieve whatever she wishes.

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Spaniard. Sorry for my english for the sensitive ones :P

There are a lot of posts here and I have only skimmed…so idk if this has been specifically postulated but:
The ioc document you posted indicates that a NF can use anyone who has qualified from another cycling event in the road race providing this doesn’t exceed the quota. Ergo: Faulkner or Megan Jastrab or any other track cyclist (or Batten or MTB rider or BMX for that matter) could qualify for the Olympic Games in one cycling discipline and then be entered in the Olympic road race as the second quota spot for the US if (when) Knibb decides not to race that event.

Yes, exactly this. Max of two racers, but the two racers don't have to come from the AQ events is how I understand it. There's been a lot of conversation on the Escape Collective Discord about this and I think that's where everyone has arrived.

MTR is the day after the RR ? If so, how do you explain to your MTR team mates that you are giving everything to win a medal if you went for a x hour bike race for an Olympic 'souvenir' ?

No way she does it.

Sounds both excellent and sensible.
And presumably one of the track cyclists is capable of completing or at least participating in the road race on 4 August. I guess USAC will be able to make a judgement as to whether such participation has any benefit. I note the 4km pursuit cyclists will be trying to qualify from 1730 on 6 August but the Omnium is not till the following weekend. They'd probably be riding out a couple of days earlier anyway and they'll have their road bikes there anyway.

I honestly think Faulkner has a halfway decent shot at a medal in the RR should they choose her as a sub.

Nice write up by Joe over on Escape https://escapecollective.com/...-olympic-time-trial/[/url]

Unfortunately behind a paywall, I'm really getting annoyed with these lately. And it would be nice if folks that post links here and they know it, to let us know so we dont waste our time.

And maybe paste a snippet that might be interesting here is an option...

TL;DR is lots of praise for her accomplishment, some detail on what led her to focusing on training on the bike (foot injury in 2022 preventing her from running), and some vague insight into her plans for the Olympics and the future.

From the article:

Knibb said that “I haven’t made an official decision yet. But Dan and I have agreed that I shouldn’t do the road race.” She notes she’s never done a cycling road race before, and that the triathlon relay – a strong medal opportunity for the U.S. triathlon team – is the next day.

But Knibb absolutely plans to race that time trial. Does she harbor dreams of a medal? Knibb won’t tip her hand, saying only that “my team’s aim is for me to execute the best race possible each day.”
Even if she doesn’t medal, a good result might raise more questions about her athletic future, which of course calls back to that long-ago conversation with Henderson. Does pro cycling hold allure for Knibb?
The two-time Ironman 70.3 series champion said that “right now, I really love triathlon,” and “there is still a lot I would like to explore in the sport,” citing the level of autonomy and control she has over her race calendar and goals. Road racing is a team sport, where those personal goals often have to be subsumed for the team.

That’s my bad. I didn’t even think about the paywall.

Escape is a niche little cycling site entirely funded by members so the paywall serves a good purpose.

The most interesting part to me was that Faulkner may get subbed in for the road race by way of qualifying as a track cyclist if she’s able to pull that off.

Yeah, I forget about Escape’s paywall when I link to friends too. I’ve been a member since the beginning so it slips my mind.