Meet Little 5's fifth men

Months of night riding, running stairs at Ballantine Hall and rolling on trainers ends with a spot in the Little 500.

But not for sophomore Adam Fish, at least not last year.

Fish, a Sigma Chi rider, was the team’s fifth rider. Teams are only allowed four riders on race day, and the search for the final four begins with Individual Time Trials, which take place today at 4 p.m. at Bill Armstrong Stadium.

Last year, Fish put his sweat and leg power into riding with the team. But he was unable to compete. Instead, he sat in the stands while the 2009 Men’s Little 500 race went on without him.

“Last year, I was pretty close to another rider, and it came down to race experience and a seniority-type thing, which was the right decision to make,” Fish said. “I wasn’t ready for the race that year. But this year, we’ve got some new guys coming in, and we’re letting everyone battle it out on the track.

“We have a little process in the system for ranking guys in our program that’s all done based on your performance at the track. ITT’s are really important, especially for the guys competing for spots. It’s one of the objective things that determines who rides the race.”

How Sigma Chi bases its final four is not necessarily how every cycling team decides its top riders for race day. Phi Gamma Delta has known its best cyclists since the team’s spring break training.

“It kind of just showed who the top four were, who were constantly finishing up front and what not,” senior Phi Gamma Delta rider Todd Leone said. “I’m not trying to put down the other riders, but it was always the same four finishing up front.”

Sophomore Black Key Bulls rider Stephen Mis was also a fifth rider last year. He found out he wasn’t going to race after spring break in 2009. Although his teammates never told him he was the fifth rider, he knew where he fell in the lineup. To Mis, ITT’s is just a spring series event.

“It’s a good way to judge how fast somebody is, but at the same time, it’s only four laps and generally during the race, you’re not going to be riding by yourself for a full-out four laps,” Mis said. “It doesn’t necessarily represent race-day situations.”

Instead of being frustrated by watching from the sidelines, Mis was one of the team’s student coaches. From that, he said he learned more about the top race in collegiate cycling.

While Mis said he knows he will put his rubber to the cinder on April 24, sophomore Jack McMahon is still wondering whether he will be one of Wright Cycling’s race-day riders. Before this week’s qualifications, McMahon’s coach said he still had areas of his cycling to tweak.

“We had a team meeting and he just told me ‘You’re fast enough, but unfortunately your exchanges just aren’t to the point that we need them to be for qualifications. So don’t let that get you down, just keep working, because you still have a chance to get in,’” McMahon said.

The opportunity to still ride fuels McMahon’s training.

“I still think I’m more than fast enough to make the team, and I still am willing to work hard for that fourth spot, even for the fifth spot, to make our team faster.”

For Fish, the hard work needed to make the Sigma Chi team began when last year’s race ended.

“I trained really hard this summer,” Fish said. “I wanted to come back and kind of make a statement and show what I was capable of. I came back in good shape, and it kind of raised the bar for the team.

“I came back a little stronger than some of our good riders, and that was just from training hard for a couple months. I spent a lot of time on the bike.”

From the stands as last year’s odd man out, Fish said he learned strategy he will bring with him to this year’s competition.

“You got to see how the better teams are, the ones who take responsibility of the race and ride in front and chase down breakaways and protect their position and things like that,” he said. “There’s a big responsibility to being in a lead team.”