At the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, Taylor Knibb ’16 won a silver medal for the United States in mixed triathlon relay team event. At 26 years old, this is her second silver medal, and she won her first in the same event at the 2021 Tokyo Olympics.
In 2024, she was the fourth leg of the relay and brought the U.S. from fifth place to second place in a photo finish. The other relay team members were Morgan Pearson, Taylor Spivey and Seth Rider.
The mixed triathlon relay consists of four team members, two male and two female, who each swim, bike and run in a super-sprint triathlon. For Olympians, each athlete races for about twenty minutes. In Paris, Knibb’s other teammates were Morgan Pearson, Taylor Spivey and Seth Rider.
Knibb also qualified for the individual cycling time trial and the triathlon for the 2024 Olympics, being the only American athlete to compete in two separate sports.
However, Knibb did not perform up to her expectations in either individual event. In the Women’s Individual Time Trial, Knibb finished 19th after crashing three times.
In an interview with Horizon, Knibb admitted that “all three [crashes] were my fault entirely.” In the first crash, she pedaled through a roundabout and the slick roads caused her to fall and break her front brake on the left side.
She did not realize that she had damaged her bike until she had fallen down twice more, but she then changed to her spare time trial bike. In all, Knibb brought four bikes to Paris, two for the time-trial and two road bikes for the triathlon.
After the cycling time trial, Knibb said that she received treatment from Lawrence Van Lingen, one of the best movement specialists in the world.
“He got my body structurally as good as it could have been given the circumstances — I am so grateful he was in Paris,” she said.
Nevertheless, Knibb added that “crashing is highly stressful on your body … and I severely underestimated the amount of energy that the crashes took out of me.”
She also mentioned that she did not increase her energy intake enough for the individual race and still had open wounds. She ended up finishing 19th in the Women’s Triathlon, her main event.
After her performances in her individual events, Knibb moved out of the Athlete Village. “I know myself pretty well,” she said, “and I have a good idea of what helps me perform well and what does not.”
“Advocating for myself and what is important — like showing up and performing well — may have been something that I learned indirectly from Sidwell Athletics,” she added.
“I had the fitness; I just needed to recover … and then execute. That helped tremendously.”
Reflecting on her experiences at the Summer Olympics, Knibb said that although her individual competitions were “far from what I was hoping it would be,” she has “learned a lot from Paris.”
“I think [my experience] will ultimately make me a better athlete. I’ve started working with a bike skills coach already.”
Overall, Knibb said that she is “very grateful that I had the opportunity to express a lot of the work that I had done in preparation for all three competitions in the relay.”
At the 2021 Tokyo Olympics, at 23 years old Knibb was the youngest woman to qualify for the U.S. Triathlon. She won her first Olympic medal, silver, with the mixed relay team alongside Kevin McDowell, Morgan Pearson and Katie Zaferes.
Taylor Knibb’s desire to run triathlons grew after one day watching her mom, Leslie Knibb, run an IRONMAN. Knibb noticed the positive energy and decided to try a kid’s triathlon race. She soon fell in love with the sport, competing in the U.S.A. Triathalon’s youth and junior elite ladders.
To this day, her favorite part of competing in triathlons is the challenge of always improving and growing within the sport, as well as the companionship of the triathlon community.
In addition to triathlons, Taylor Knibb also runs IRONMANs, becoming the youngest person ever to win the IRONMAN 70.3 in St George Utah.
She won again in 2023, and placed fourth in her first-ever full IRONMAN World Championships in Hawaii, the top American placement there. The IRONMAN 70.3 consists of a 1.2 mile swim, a 56 mile bike ride and a 13.1 mile run. The regular IRONMAN is double that, totalling 140.6 miles.
During her time at Sidwell Friends, Knibb ran cross country and swam for the Nation’s Capital Swim Club.
She was named the Gatorade Cross Country Runner of the Year in Washington for 2014-2015 and 2015-2016, as well as the 2014 and 2015 D.C. State Athletic Association Runner of the Year.
Knibb said that her experience at Sidwell “definitely shaped who [she is] as a person.”
“It helped normalize living and operating in a highly stressful environment on a day-to-day basis,” she added. “I also think I really learned how to learn — and learn quickly, which is integral in sport (and many other areas of life).”
Knibb later went to Cornell University and continued her athletic career, running NCAA Track and Cross Country for four years and competing for the Cornell Swim Team her senior year. At the same time she had to manage her elite triathlon career and balance her studies.
Knibb is now looking ahead at the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles. “I know that for a lot of people, the Summer Olympics are roughly two weeks every four years. But there is a lot of preparation that goes into qualifying let alone competing … Four years seems like a long time, but isn’t that much time.”
When asked what advice she would give to young athletes aspiring to compete at an elite level in triathlon or time trial cycling, Knibb noted the importance of “patience, consistency and lots of hard work.”
Those characteristics “can be tough if you’re not passionate about what you’re doing,” she added. “So it’s important to be honest with yourself about what you really want.”
