Ashton Lambie is a wild card in the track racing scene who elbowed his way to the top of a discipline of close-knit riders, for the most part ignoring the discipline’s long-standing traditions and unwritten rules, with a casual charm that disarmed even the most staunch purists.

But how he got there was a little unorthodox.

He first grabbed the spotlight after his world-record breaking Individual Pursuit ride at the Pan American Track Cycling Championships. This was August of 2018, a mere two years after he began racing the track in 2016.

Andrew Owen White

Everything about Lambie—his look, his background, his straightforward attitude and riding style—projected the kind of authenticity that the bike world loves to romanticize. His story made the nostalgic dream seem possible: The kid from Nowhere who just works hard and loves to ride could succeed at the highest level of the sport. Lambie has the kind of origin story your brain can’t help but spin into an Olympics training montage, even when he’s just riding a trainer in an old garage, climbing a digital mountain on pace with an avatar that may or may not be the real Mark Cavendish.

I spent the weekend with Lambie at his Nebraska farm house (and Zwifted with him in that garage), and confirmed our suspicions—he is no ordinary bike racer. Here are nine reasons why:

1. Gravel racing is how he learned to HTFU.

Before he took on track racing, Lambie was a gravel riding extraordinaire, briefly holding the record for fastest ride across Kansas in 2015 (400 miles in 23 hours and 53 minutes). After that he turned his attention to racing.

Andrew Owen White

Lambie says the lowest point he’s ever had in any race was during the 2016 Dirty Kanza. It was a hot, humid day for early spring. Five miles into the race, his derailleur hanger broke in a mud section, putting him way behind. About 140 miles in, he was still riding alone on a long stretch between checkpoints, out of water and food, and crushed by the heat and news of other racers throwing in the towel. He called his wife and said he was done. But she talked him into continuing at least to the next checkpoint, where he got a second wind. After all, what was another 45 miles, when you’re 155 miles in? So he continued on, and he won his age group and 6th overall.

Andrew Owen White

Today that memory fuels his whole philosophy of racing. “All rides, whether it’s a four or five minute ride or a 24-hour ride, will have points where you feel really good, and points where you feel really bad,” Lambie says. “Now I just think, ‘I’m feeling really bad right now—this isn’t a reflection of me as a person, it’s going to pass’ and disassociate it from my worth as a rider. You just can’t get caught up in thinking riding sucks because it sucks at that moment.”

2. His training playlist probably is nothing like yours.

It consists of mostly classic country music, and sometimes includes NPR’s Prairie Home Companion and Tchaikovsky. Check it out.

3. His trademark mustache.

Underneath his helmet and sunglasses, Lambie has the intense blue eyes and handlebar mustache of a late-19th-century strongman. He started growing it during No-Shave November in college six or seven years ago, and at some point it became a permanent look, though he’s aware it gave him a goofball hipster vibe when he first showed up at the track. As for grooming tips, Lambie says he doesn’t spend much time on it now—though he does eschew professional cuts to have his wife trim it. “I've had a few barbers trash it, and it takes a while to grow back out from a cop ‘stache.”

Andrew Owen White

4. Not even his coach could find his breaking point.

A less-apparent facet of his seemlingly natural, freakish physical strength is his mental fortitude. Lambie’s coach, Ben Sharp, says he almost seems to relish the suffering. “One of his talents is the ability to endure,” Sharp says. “Whether it’s short term or long term over a 30-hour effort, he has this numbing ability to disregard the pain he’s in or just to embrace it and go with it.” Last summer Sharp says he tried to crack Lambie by piling on the workouts to find his breaking point. “I just wanted to find out if he even had a mental limit,” he says. “I had to relent before he did.”

Andrew Owen White

5. He became a world-caliber track racer on...grass.

As far as anyone knows, there’s only one USAC-certified grass velodrome in the US, a 333-meter track mowed into a pasture at the northwest outskirts of Lawrence, Kansas. Most riders there, like Lambie, found out about it through word of mouth. Lambie caught wind of this strange racing scene and stopped by to check it out in July of 2016. It was a pretty low-key affair—just two bumpy dirt lanes, a pull lane and a passing lane—but it was well-suited to a gravel racer. “On Lambie’s first night out there, he asked me about the rules,” Schlager says. “Then he asked to borrow my track bike, and blew everyone away.” He did about five races there before road-tripping out to Boulder, Miami, and LA to take on bigger races on cement tracks.

Andrew Owen White

Andrew Owen White

6. He refuses to race with tactics.

Lambie recalls one college-era race in which the coach requested he attack early and force the other teams to work so his teammates could rest for the finish. “Well, that’s shitty,” Lambie remembers thinking. “I don’t just want to just sit in for the second half of the race. I only want to race if I’m trying to win.” This mantra echos again and again through Lambie’s race history, as if the ghost of Steve Prefontaine is communicating with him through their shared facial hair. The iconic ‘70s distance runner had a penchant for going out hard—or in a quote often attributed to him, only running at “suicide pace.” Sometimes it worked, sometimes he burnt out early. But like Lambie, he seemed incapable of doing it any other way. “That’s why I like gravel racing,” said Lambie. “We’re just sitting there punching each other until someone gives up. Same with the individual pursuit. It’s 100 percent not about who’s the smartest, but who’s going to ride the fastest.” Most people meter their effort in the qualifying rounds of a pursuit tournament to save some energy for the final. But the year he won the national championship, Lambie went out guns blazing from the start, lapping competitors in the first round.

Andrew Owen White

Andrew Owen White

And it isn’t just that he hates strategy—he hates the whole concept of drafting. No part of him wants to race a single lap sitting on someone’s wheel, even if it’s part of the race. During an elimination race at the Stubhub Center velodrome in LA, in which the last person across the finish line each lap is eliminated from the race, Lambie didn’t ride the way you’re “supposed” to in that race. Instead of expending the minimum amount of energy, “I lapped the field on an elimination race and then flatted,” Lambie says. “I rolled into the infield and people were like, ‘Oh, did you just get bored of whooping everyone’s ass?”

7. He could serenade us on the piano (or accordion).

Before he was a world record holding bike racer, he was a music major and played the piano for several hours a day. In high school, he rode nine miles to school, practiced piano for an hour before classes, played in marching band, and then pedaled nine miles back home every day. Now he can play piano and accordion, which wasn’t too hard to learn (since half of it is a piano, he says).

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8. He started a campus bike share program at his college.

It wasn’t until he got to Hastings College, about 100 miles west of Lincoln, that he completely fell in love with bikes. Lambie launched a student-run bike share program with about 30 bikes, run out of a garage. He got the bikes through Joyride Bikes, the shop he worked in at the time, and secured funding with the help of his economics professor. Today the program is still running and has moved into its own space and expanded to 120 bikes. “As far as I know, the program has had full use every semester since!” Lambie says.

9. His midwestern corn-country roots keep him humble.

Andrew Owen White

When folks see him out training in his National Championship kit on the gravel roads outside Lincoln, their first question is often where they can get an American flag jersey like that. Nobody out in the cornfield of Nebraska really knows (or cares) what he is doing, or that he is one of the best in the world at it. When he won that stars and stripes jersey, he says the Lincoln news headlines read simply “Local Boy Wins Cycling Contest.”

Andrew Owen White

Andrew Owen White

Andrew Owen White

Between races, Lambie lives the simple life in a three-bedroom farmhouse off a gravel road outside Lincoln, Nebraska, with his wife Margaret, a music teacher. The house, built by a doomsday prepper, gets its heat from a massive wood stove planted in one end of the lopsided building frame. Two angora rabbits poke out from under a coffee table with the latest Farmer’s Almanac on top. In the kitchen, a tray of miniature chocolate chip cookies cools, waiting to be packed away as ride fuel.

Andrew Owen White

Andrew Owen White

Everything is practical and useful—the vegetable garden outside, Margaret’s plans to knit all that rabbit fur into sweaters, the barn out back where Lambie’s father, Marv, runs the landscaping business that serves as his professional sponsor. Fueled by some Nebraskan ideal of hard work garnered in this setting, he just keeps setting massive, impractical goals and then practically chipping away at them.