Taylor Knibb: The Challenge of Competing in Two Different Sports At The Olympic Games

PARIS — Taylor Knibb came to the Olympic Games Paris 2024 as the only Team USA athlete competing in two separate sports. She qualified for the Games in both the cycling time trial and triathlon. 

Neither event went as planned for the 26-year-old from Boulder, Colorado. It rained during both races, making Paris’ historic cobbles — and even the regular asphalt — slick. Knibb crashed four times during the time trial and finished 19^th.

Four days later, she got off to a bad start in the triathlon swim and exited the water in the last third of the field. After trying valiantly to bridge to the lead group during the 40-kilometer bike leg (cutting her deficit in half), she ended up finishing again 19^th.

“I'm severely disappointed, but you keep moving on with life,” Knibb said after the triathlon, smiling despite the emotion.

The magnitude of her feat had not yet sunk in. 

Of the 1,006 athletes to have competed in two different sports at an Olympic Games, only 15 are American women. And most of those athletes have competed in different disciplines within the same sport: i.e., Chloé Dygert competing in road and track cycling at the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 and Paris 2024.

While cycling is part of triathlon’s swim-bike-run combo, the two sports require different training. And serious cyclists rarely run. But Knibb is the rare athlete who can balance it all, even competing in long-course triathlons too. 

“I think it was eye opening in a lot of ways,” she said, of tackling two sports at these Olympic Games. 

The cycling time trial in Paris was “streamlined,” she said, making it easy to compete, despite the rain. With more variables to balance (like water quality and air temperature), the triathletes faced more challenges. 

“I think we learned from everyone,” Knibb added. “I'm really grateful for the opportunity, but again, I'm disappointed I didn't perform it either.”

Knibb hopes that she is not yet done with Olympic competition. She is hoping to compete in the triathlon mixed relay on Monday, Aug. 5. She was on the Olympic silver-medal winning U.S. mixed relay team in Tokyo.

While many triathletes discover the sport after swimming or running in college, Knibb grew up in the swim-bike-run life. Her mom, Leslie Knibb, has long competed in Ironman competitions. Young Taylor liked the positive atmosphere surrounding those grueling events. She tried her first triathlon at age 11 and was hooked. (Leslie Knibb has competed since 1992 and often wins her age group).

Growing up in Washington, D.C., Knibb was surrounded by “phenomenal people” who “raised the bar.” She attended Sidwell Friends School — alma mater of many U.S. presidents’ kids, and she swam at the Nation’s Capital Swim Club, home to 11-time Olympic medalist Katie Ledecky, who is just a year older than Knibb. 

By high school, Knibb was a force in running and triathlon. She ran cross-country at Sidwell Friends, winning multiple honors. In triathlon, she won 2015 and 2016 junior national titles and finished runner-up at the 2015 ITU Junior World Championships. 

From Sidwell Friends, Knibb went to Cornell University, where she ran cross-country specifically to improve in triathlon. A month into her freshman year, she competed at the 2016 ITU Junior World Championships in Cozumel, Mexico. Her cross-country coach was also an academic advisor at Cornell and was not enthusiastic about Knibb’s extra extracurricular activity.

“He had very high standards for our team and our athletes, and he was horrified that I would be missing three days of school my freshman year,” remembered Knibb. “He’s like, ‘You can’t miss three days of school at Cornell!’

“But I did the race and was okay academically.”

Knibb did better than okay. She won junior worlds that year and the next (2017), and in 2018 became the U23 world triathlon champion — one of just three female triathletes ever to capture world titles at both the junior and U23 levels. She also became the youngest woman to earn a spot on the podium at an ITU World Triathlon Series race in 2017, earning silver in Edmonton, Alberta.

But all was not entirely well with Knibb. With her focus pulled away by academic and NCAA sport commitments, she felt like she was not showing up at her best for triathlons, yet she was racing against the world’s best. Her training, she said, “didn’t feel purposeful enough.”

“I’m ready to walk away from the sport,” Knibb told one of her coaches.

Rather than let her give up, her coach suggested that she could pivot from triathlon to cycling and still realize her Olympic dreams. His suggestion planted a “little seed.”

“You kind of tuck it away, and you think about it,” Knibb said.

Meanwhile, the Tokyo Olympic Games were on the horizon, and she was determined to qualify in triathlon. She made it, but the Tokyo Olympic race did not go as planned. Unfamiliar with the pre-Olympic media crush and other responsibilities, she arrived in Tokyo “very tired.” And nervous too. Oh, and it rained. She finished 16^th in the individual triathlon.

A bright spot, Knibb won an Olympic silver medal in Tokyo as part of Team USA’s mixed relay team.

To win a medal at the Paris Games, Knibb knew she had to have a better plan. Despite her bubbly personality, she struggles with media demands. She needed to find races with media pressure similar to an Olympic Games. She also wanted to race more but travel less. So she began long-course triathlons.

She entered IRONMAN 70.3 triathlons because they are easier to find in the U.S. (The U.S. has not hosted a World Triathlon Championship Series race since 2015.) In 2022, Knibb became the youngest woman to ever win the IRONMAN 70.3 World Championship in St. George, Utah. She defended her that title in 2023.

Knibb also entered the Ironman World Championships that year in Kona, Hawaii, considered the Olympics of the sport. The 140.6 mile distance (2.4-mile swim, 112-mile bike, full marathon run) is far longer than Olympic distances (32 miles: 1.5-kilometer swim, 40km bike, 10km run). But Knibb knew media exposure would be heavy. 

She finished as the top U.S. woman in fourth. But the result wasn’t the point. It gave her practice dealing with media demands.

Then the cycling seed planted back in 2019 began to germinate. Last summer, Knibb entered the U.S. national championship cycling time trial and finished fourth. Although she crossed the finish line less than two seconds behind two-time world time trial champion Amber Neben, Knibb was frustrated with her performance. She wanted to do better.

When she began working with coach Dan Lorang last November, Knibb wanted to explore the idea of competing in the time trial-triathlon combo in Paris. The two events would be four days apart. She was wondering if it was feasible to compete in both. For the next few months, the idea was on and off the table.

“Things fell into place” this past spring, said Knibb. She finished second in the Yokohama WTCS triathlon in May and qualified for the Paris Games in triathlon. Then five days later, Knibb won the U.S. national time trial championships and earned another Olympic berth. 

“Taylor is one of the most unique and talented athletes we have ever seen,” said Scott Schnitzspahn, USA Triathlon’s high performance general manager, earlier this year. “It’s rare to have an athlete who is able to race both short-course, draft-legal triathlon on the World Triathlon Championship Series circuit and long-course IRONMAN triathlons. To have an athlete who not only can do that, but is also so versatile that she qualifies for the Olympics in two sports is a testament to not only how gifted Taylor is from an athletic standpoint, but even more so, her relentless work ethic, mindset, and drive.”

At the Paris Olympic Games, Knibb’s primary goal was to win a medal in the women’s triathlon. The cycling time trial, while important, could serve as a warm up.

But then it rained. In the cycling time trial last Saturday, Knibb crashed four times. Fortunately, her injuries were limited to road rash, with no broken bones.

In the triathlon, Knibb found herself behind from the start, battling the currents in the Seine. She exited the water in 33^rd place, over two minutes behind the leaders. Over the next hour on the bike, she closed the gap, just not by enough. 

“It's tough to understand the Olympics because it's one day every four years,” she said, the disappointment coming through. “You don’t have another chance for 1,500 days, or maybe 1,400, I don't know what 365 times four is right now.”

Looking back over her two Olympic Games experiences, Knibb realized that she has had three of her four Olympic races in the rain.

“I was telling my coach that some people do heat camps, some people do altitude camps, I live in Boulder, so I thought, ‘I don't need to do camps,’” she added. “But I really need to do rain camps and just learn how to be fully comfortable in whatever condition because we do sports where we race outside, and so that's what you get.”

Despite Olympic disappointment, Knibb is already looking toward the Olympic Games Los Angeles 2028.

“The Olympics are a huge endeavor, and I hope I'm back at a few more,” she said. “They're really special, but they're very tough, both amazing and brutal.”

Kristin Armstrong, three-time Olympic gold medalist in the cycling time trial, has jokingly suggested to Knibb that she announce her retirement before the L.A. Games. Armstrong twice came back from retirement to win Olympic gold. 

“You look at (Australia’s) Grace Brown who won the time trial, and (France’s)Pauline Ferrand-Prévot who won mountain biking, and a lot of athletes who have announced their retirement who are winning,” said Knibb, partially in gest. “Maybe I'll have to say I'm retiring after L.A., but you never know!”

An award-winning freelance writer based in Vermont, Peggy Shinn is in Paris covering her eighth Olympic Games. She has contributed to TeamUSA.org since its inception in 2008.