Taylor Knibb will bid for Olympic glory in both triathlon and the road cycling time trial next month in Paris – and she has the perfect coach to help her prepare for the audacious bid.
That’s Dan Lorang, who guided Lucy Charles-Barclay to a long-awaited IRONMAN World Championship victory last year – and who has also had enduring coaching partnerships with 2019 IMWC winner Anne Haug and the legendary Jan Frodeno.
Remarkably, Lorang’s main job is actually Head of Performance / Head Coach of the Bora-hansgrohe professional cycling team, which later this week will start their bid for Tour de France glory with Primož Roglič.
But in Knibb, Charles-Barclay and Haug, he oversees the coaching of three of the top four women in the PTO world rankings.
‘We saw it could work’
So how did the partnership with the American phenom, who is #1 in the standings and has won her last six middle-distance races, including two 70.3 World Championships, come about?
When we caught up with Dan to find out more it turns out there was a link with none other than Frodeno.
Lorang explained: “There was a first contact with Lawrence Van Lingen, who is working on her running technique and biomechanics. And he worked together with Jan Frodeno. So that’s where was the first touching point was last year during the World Championship in Nice, when Lawrence told me that Taylor would be interested in talking to me about the future.
“I obviously knew Jan would be ending his career after that Nice race so there would be one spot available for an athlete.
“But I said, I don’t want any rumours to come up before so let’s wait until she races [her first] Kona and then we’ll talk after that. And that’s what we did. So I had a good chat with Taylor after Kona, and I listened to her goals, where she wants to go, what she needed. And then we said, okay, let’s give it a try until Christmas and see that it can work.
We said that during that period, I would also talk to Anne [Haug] and Lucy [Charles-Barclay] about it and how they see it and basically the final outcome was they were okay with it.
“And Taylor and myself, we saw it could work. We have a nice team together with Lawrence, Julie Dibens as a swim coach and Erin Carson as her strength and conditioning coach. So it’s basically a team around Taylor that she’s created. That was the starting point and it’s obviously going very well.”
‘An interesting project’
Given Knibb’s dual focus on triathlon and cycling – she won this year’s US National Time Trial Championship to qualify for Paris – it would seem that Lorang is perfectly positioned to be her coach.
He told us: “So on paper it looked like it could really fit together. But, you know, it’s always about people. And also about these special situations.
“I didn’t know Taylor at all. I hadn’t met her apart from on video call, and I wasn’t on the ground with her so I was not sure if this kind of coaching could really work for her because she was used to going to a training group and having people around.
“And I think that one big point why it’s working is we have that group of people around her and we built this whole working together also on trust, so we were really open to each other from the first moment on. And until now, it works pretty well, I have to say.
“And for sure she had that interesting project with trying to go to the Olympics in two disciplines. And that is quite something also for a coach.
“And yeah, we have had some good race results for sure. We are doing some ‘little bit crazy’ things – like after WTCS Yokohama, going straight to the nationals [cycling time trial] which also for me was something new to combine the two. And that’s why we said it’s always a project, it’s never a guarantee. So you’re doing it together as a project, you know the risks, you know the pros and cons, and then you work together towards this goal and you must enjoy it.”
“It was a little bit the same when I started to work together with Lucy. Because the main goal was to try to also qualify for the Olympics and combine it with long distance triathlon. We didn’t made it because of some injuries but that was the initial aim.
“And with Taylor here it was the same – she had a project in mind and was really committed to it.”
Shared aims
And Dan also revealed that his wife knew straight away from that first call with Knibb that this could be another very special coaching partnership.
He revealed: “I remember when I had the first chat on a video call with Taylor, my wife just walked past the room and listened to it for a minute. And after the call she just said, ‘yeah, that’s one for you’.
“And I said, okay, probably it’s a good fit. From the mental side, from the physical side, but also from the ambition side we’ve matched quite good together so far.”
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