Teter rider sets new track record

For Teter junior Sarah Rieke, No. 1 is becoming a familiar position.\nFour days after helping her team claim the top spot at Qualifications, Rieke broke a Little 500 Individual Time Trial record with an official 2:34.27 mark she set Wednesday night. \n“It’s the best I could do,” she said. “Honestly, I was looking to feel good the whole run; that was the whole goal.”\nRieke’s time broke former Kappa Alpha Theta rider Liz Milne’s 2005 record by more than a second. She also won the ITTs for the fall cycling series.\nIt was wonderful to break the record, Rieke said, but ultimately the series events are just for fun.\n“Our idea is to train through them,” Rieke said, “not for them.”\nRieke rode for the 2005 Teter team that won the race and has flown under the radar since a 12th-place finish last year. \nIt has been Rieke’s goal to put her team back on the map.\n“We don’t want to be stared at as the team to beat, we just want to be one of the good teams,” she said after Qualifications. “We want to show that we’re good so that we can work with other good teams.”\nOn the men’s side, one team took an early lead in the spring series. Riders from Cutters placed first and second at ITTs on Wednesday night. \nJuniors Sasha Land and Alex Bishop recorded times within a second of each other. \nLand won with an official time of 2:18.94, improving by almost three seconds from last year’s time. \nLand said he had no comment after his winning performance. \nHis teammate, Bishop, said the track, and the entire men’s field, were in good conditions. \n“Everyone’s riding fast, so it’s going to be a competitive year,” he said. \nBishop, who also finished second in last year’s ITTs, said he had met his goal for the event. \n“I started off a little too fast but other than that it was a good run,” he said. “I am pretty happy.”\nThough they failed to repeat as pole-sitters, Bishop said the team was looking to repeat as series-event champions and wear the white jersey again. \nThe group graduated one rider, Greg Buhay, from last year’s fifth-place team.\nAnd were it not for transferring rules, the team could have placed one-two-three. Eric Hamilton, who rode for Cinzano last year, joined the Cutters squad this year. Though he cannot ride on race day and his ITT time does not count, he was the third fastest rider of the night. \n“I am in a unique situation where I have to sit out a year because I switched teams,” Hamilton said after his heat. “So this is the only thing I have a chance to win all year.”