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Team New Zealand may have a leg up in America’s Cup thanks to ‘cyclors’

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June 22, 2017 at 12:37 a.m. EDT
Cyclors for Emirates Team New Zealand pedal during the third race of America's Cup sailing competition in Hamilton, Bermuda. The effort is a new way of powering the hydraulics of the boat. (Gregory Bull/AP)

The America’s Cup has never seen anything like this.

When Emirates Team New Zealand’s 50-foot catamaran speeds around Bermuda’s Great Sound, four of the six crewmen are hunched over, furiously pedaling away.

That’s right, pedaling. On a sailboat.

When the red-and-black catamaran turns, the “cyclors” unclip from their cycling pedestals in one hull, dash across the trampoline netting stretched across the boat and clip into the cycling pedestals in the other hull, and continue pedaling away.

One of the cyclors, 28-year-old Simon van Velthooven, has an Olympic bronze medal in track cycling. He might soon be an America’s Cup champion if New Zealand’s astoundingly fast design package, of which the cycling system is just one part, whisks them to victory against two-time defending champion Oracle Team USA.

The boats are not allowed to have engines, so Team New Zealand’s pedaling powers the hydraulic systems used to maneuver the wingsail and the daggerboards, or retractable centerboards, that are tipped with hydrofoils. When the boats reach a certain speed, they rise up on a daggerboard and rudders, with the hulls completely out of the water.

The actual sailing is done by helmsman Peter Burling, 26, an Olympic gold and silver medalist; skipper Glenn Ashby, 39, an Olympic silver medalist who controls the wingsail with an Xbox-like device; and Blair Tuke, 27, Burling’s Olympic teammate who has a dual role of cyclor and foil trimmer.

This is the first time cyclists have powered a boat in the America’s Cup match. A Swedish team tried a cycling system in 1977. The Swedes didn’t win.

“If you have half a brain and you know that your legs are stronger than your arms, why wouldn’t you give it a go?” van Velthooven said.

Team New Zealand won its races against Oracle Team USA last weekend and leads 3-0. Racing resumes Saturday.

The New Zealander, also known as Kiwis, began secretly working on the cycling system three years ago in Auckland. Other than the bike seats that can be seen in the cockpits, little is known of the system. And the Kiwis aren’t real chatty about it.

“It doesn’t look like a bike at all. Just imagine a set of cranks and that’s about it, really,” van Velthooven said.

Does it have a chain?

“No comment. Not yet,” he said.

Van Velthooven calls the cyclor system “a 10th of 10 different things that are all working at the same time to give a package that’s 100 percent awesome. . . . The ideas that the designers had and then for the machinists and boat builders to build it, and then to go out there on the water and actually see it working as we dreamed it, is a pretty awesome thing to deliver for the boys.”