Knibb began participating in triathlons at age 11, inspired by watching her mother, Leslie Knibb, compete in the Ironman triathlon. At age 15, she began competing on the youth and junior elite circuit.[8] At Sidwell Friends School for high school, she participated in swim and cross country, while continuing to compete in triathlon. In 2014 and 2015 she was named both the Washington D.C. Gatorade Cross Country Runner of the Year and the D.C. State Athletic Association Runner of the Year.
Following in the footsteps of many of her family members, she attended Cornell, where she ran NCAA track and cross country for four years, and competed on the swim team her senior year. She graduated in 2020.[9]
Her role models include her mother, Tamara Gorman, and Gwen Jorgensen.[8]
She joined the national team in 2017, and remains the youngest athlete on the team.[10]
Athletic career
In her junior career, she won the USA Triathlon Junior National Championship in 2015 and 2016, the Junior World Championships in 2016 and 2017, and the U23 World Championships in 2018. She is one of three women to ever hold both Junior and U23 world titles.[9] At the 2017 ITU World Triathlon Series in Edmonton she finished second to become the youngest woman to ever podium in the series.[11]
In October 2022 Knibb won the Women's Ironman 70.3 World Championship, held in St George, Utah, becoming the youngest woman to ever win the race.[12] One year later, Knibb successfully defended her title, winning the Ironman 70.3 World championship for the second year in a row.[citation needed]
At the Paris Test Event in August 2023, Knibb placed fifth, qualifying her to compete in Triathlon for team USA at the 2024 Summer Olympics.[14] In May 2024, she won the Time Trial at the USA Cycling National Road Championships, qualifying her for the Time Trial cycling event Paris 2024 and making her a rare dual-sport Olympian.[7] She finished nineteenth in the event, after crashing multiple times.[15] For the triathlon events, she finished nineteenth in the women's event before anchoring the US team to a repeat silver medal in the mixed relay.[16]
In 2024 so far, Taylor Knibb has won three out of the three races she has competed in, in the PTO's T100 World Tour. She won in San Francisco, Ibiza and Las Vegas. She won each time by powering away from the rest of the field on the bike in impressive fashion.
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