Ashton Lambie is pursuing the America's Cup while his wife Chris Birch aims for outer space
SAN DIEGO (AP) — Pushing boundaries and going fast was always in the sporting DNAs of cyclists Ashton Lambie and Chris Birch, whether it was speeding around velodromes or across the gravel backroads of the Great Plains.
Ultimately, they had hoped to compete in the Tokyo Olympics three years ago.
When that road ended, the couple began pursuing frontiers that many dream of and few reach.
Birch graduated from NASA astronaut training in March and is aiming for outer space. Her first mission will be either to the International Space Station or to the moon as part of the Artemis program.
Lambie is still pedaling, but now it's while he's flying over the tops of waves on the Mediterranean in a fantastical-looking sloop named Patriot as he tries to win the America's Cup.
Lambie is a “cyclor” with the New York Yacht Club’s American Magic, one of the crewmen who pedal recumbent bikes to provide the power needed to trim the sails as the powerful 75-foot monohull zigzags up and down the course on hydrofoils, its hull completely out of the water.
The Louis Vuitton Cup for the five challengers, including American Magic, starts Thursday in Barcelona. The winner advances to face two-time defending champion Emirates Team New Zealand in the 37th America's Cup in mid-October.
Cyclors were introduced in 2017 aboard Team New Zealand's 50-foot foiling catamaran that dethroned tech billionaire Larry Ellison’s powerhouse Oracle Team USA.
The thinking was that leg power provides more juice to trim the sails than the arm power formerly supplied by beefy grinders who turned the coffee-grinder winches.
Cyclors were banned in 2021 after the competition pivoted to the AC75 foiling monohulls. But when crew sizes were reduced from 11 to eight for this America's Cup, leg power returned to favor and cyclors became part of every team’s arsenal. Of the eight-man crew, four are cyclors. American Magic has 10 cyclors on its roster who will rotate race by race to stay fresh.
Lambie's cycling resume includes being the first person to complete an individual pursuit in under four minutes and winning a few dozen gravel races, including the 1,060-mile Flint Hills Gravel Ultra in 72 hours of ride time in May 2023.
He heard about the opportunity with American Magic through Declan Doyle of SRAM bike components, which had been one of his personal sponsors and is a supplier for American Magic.
“They were looking for cyclists that were a little more powerful and a little bit on the strength side,” Lambie said. “Not necessarily your Tour de France riders that go uphill really fast.”
Sailing wasn’t in Lambie’s background.
“But I did know how to keep pushing boundaries and just go fast,” he said. “Like bend the rules a little bit to go as fast as possible, I guess, which seems to be a common thread between track racing and the America’s Cup.”
He did get a bit of sailing experience after he and Chris moved to Houston for her astronaut training.
“I do have the Lakewood Yacht Club Winter Regatta under my belt, so that’s something, at least,” he cracked. “I think we might have gotten second or third. I was just rail meat. We were just hanging out. I trimmed a little bit. It was fun."
Now he’ll be competing for the oldest trophy in international sports for a yacht club that once held the Auld Mug for 132 years, the longest winning streak in sports.
“Have you seen this guy’s thighs?” Birch said in a video interview with her husband. “When Ashton was on the track he didn't look necessarily look like the typical track cyclist. Some of your top competitors were these lean, tall Tour de France guys who have just incredible aerobic thresholds and Ashton actually is a little bit shorter and very muscular, looks more like a sprinter. I mean, your legs are about as big as my waist.”
“I do have really big legs and I’ve always had big legs,” said Lambie, who also has a distinctive mustache.
Lambie had to learn the basics of sailing and how the cyclors must respond to the many commands that come from the helmsmen as the tactics and conditions change.
“Every time there’s a tack, a jibe, a bear-away, that’s full gas for us and pretty intense,” he said. “Our situational awareness has to be higher than when I got here. You can’t just go and mash on the pedals for 20 minutes and expect to go around the course fast.”
The sleek-looking Patriot, with a navy blue hull and white deck, was launched in early May. While cyclors on the other boats face forward, the American cyclors face aft in cockpits with mesh covers.
“I’m incredibly excited about the secret weapon we developed,” said Lambie, who also helped with installing fiber optic sensors on the boat. “It’s never felt more like we could win the cup than realizing we were the only team capitalizing on the huge aero advantages provided by recumbent cyclors.”
The legality of the mesh covers has been questioned by other teams, but they remain for now.
Birch and Lambie met while they were pursuing spots on the national cycling teams.
Birch’s resume is staggering. In cycling, she has 11 national championships as well as multiple Pan American and World Cup medals. She has degrees in mathematics, biochemistry and molecular biophysics, and a doctorate in biological engineering from MIT.
While training for the Tokyo Games, she saw that NASA opened applications for the next astronaut class. She filled out her applications at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado in between grueling practice sessions.
That was in March 2020, just before the pandemic shut down the world and pushed the Olympics back a year.
She made the Olympic long team, which meant she was qualified to race, but wasn’t selected for the short team to go to Tokyo.
The men’s team didn’t qualify a spot for the Games.
“It turned out OK,” Lambie said.
As part of her astronaut training, Birch practiced for spacewalks in a giant pool at the Johnson Space Center, learned how to work the robotic arm on the space station and participated in splashdown and recovery exercises involving the Orion capsule. She is certified to fly in the rear cockpit of the T-38N talon trainer jet, modified for NASA, and is learning to fly the UH-72 Lakota helicopter.
“While I would love to be a scientist on the moon, doing research, collecting samples, just to be a part of our return to the moon would be incredible, because we are asking such interesting scientific questions,” she said.
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Bernie Wilson has covered sailing for The Associated Press since 1991.
