Former 7-Eleven and Coors Light pro road racer Davis Phinney, who has Parksinson's disease, underwent successful brain surgery last Friday, the same day his 17-year-old son, Taylor found out he's made the short list for the upcoming summer Olympic Games on the track.
According to the Associated Press, surgeons at Stanford University Medical Center in Palo Alto, California, spent about four-and-a-half hours embedding two wires in a section of Davis Phinney's brain, doing so without complication. Next week, they'll attach a pacemaker to those wires, and when that machine gets turned on later this month, doctors believe some of his Parkinson's symptoms will be immediately relieved.
"Everything went very well, very, very well," said Dr. Jaimie Henderson, the director of Stereotactic and Functional Neurosurgery at Stanford and Phinney's surgeon.
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The elder Phinney, 48, is married to 1984 Olympic gold medalist Connie Carpenter-Phinney. Connie has been traveling with Taylor to his various track events around the world, as the Boulder High School teenager racked up enough points and results to receive confirmation from the UCI that he's the third-ranked individual pursuit track racer in the world. This means USA Cycling, the governing body, will nominate the teenage Phinney to the U.S. Olympic team later this spring, 24 years after his mother won the Olympic women's road race in Los Angeles.
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