Gray Goat Cycling earns own victory in 6th-place finish

Seated between Phi Delta Theta and Beta Theta Pi, the Gray Goat fans screamed the names of their riders, drowning out the chants of the Betas and Phi Delts.

“Ry-an Ki-el!”
clap, clap, clap-clap-clap
“Ma-att Ki-el!”
clap, clap, clap-clap-clap
“Bri-an Holt-house!”
clap, clap, clap-clap-clap
“Za-ach Trog-don!”
clap, clap, clap-clap-clap

With half an hour to go until the scheduled 2 p.m. start of the race Saturday, the Gray Goat fans bickered with the opposing fans.

“Who are you?” one Beta fan yelled to the fans of the third-year independent team.
“No,” a woman screamed from the Gray Goat stands. “Who are you?”

The taunting continued. Calls of “frat boys” and “GDI’s” were exchanged. Every chant was countered with another. With 25 minutes to go, voices were already getting hoarse.

“Guys, it’s a marathon, not a sprint,” Brian Holthouse called from his training bike. “Remember that.”

The tension built quickly. With forecasts predicting rain in the coming hours, race officials decided against the rider’s parade and rushed along the pre-race ceremony.

Before Ryan Kiel headed to the start line to begin the race for his team, the Goats huddled up, grasping each other’s shoulders and tilting their heads toward the ground.

Ryan Kiel walked toward his Schwinn while his brother Matt climbed back onto the training bike. This would be Matt Kiel’s last Little 500 as a rider. He is graduating in May from the Kelley School of Business. After four years as a rider, tens of thousands of miles on the bike, victories, failures and countless memories, it all came down to these 200 laps.

Anything less than a first-place finish would be a disappointment.

***
Three years ago, Gray Goat Cycling didn’t exist.

Matt and Ryan Kiel have ridden with each other for most of their lives. They rode competitively during their teenage years. So when Matt Kiel decided fraternity life wasn’t for him after riding for Kappa Sigma his freshman year, he knew he had someone to turn to — his younger brother, who would be attending IU in the coming
year.

In their first year together, the Kiels finished 12th, and in the following year, they came in ninth.

This year, they returned all four riders from that ninth-place team and qualified third, placing them in the front row for the start of the race.

But this year, it was all about Cutters.

It was Cutters versus the field, the independent powerhouse versus the greek system.

It was Cutters’ chance to make history and be the first team to win four consecutive races.

It was Cutters who garnered the jeers from the mostly-Greek crowd, Cutters who took the pole position, Cutters who wore the yellow jersey.

It was Cutters’ race to lose. Every other team was just an afterthought.

The day before the race, Gray Goat sat on the porch of Zach Trogdon’s house. They discussed the race, their strategy, the possibility of bad weather — everything. All of a sudden, they said, it seemed a lot more “real.”

The field, Matt Kiel said, was stronger than last year. Holthouse said they had a good shot if the race turned into, as he put it, “a ride of attrition.” All four of Gray Goat’s riders were strong. Not the strongest, but strong. And in a 200-lap race with very little room for error, it is often not the strongest, but the luckiest, who wins.

***
The pace car started creeping along the track at Bill Armstrong Stadium, leading the riders on their warm-up laps. As he passed the Gray Goat pit, Ryan Kiel nodded his head slightly, silently recognizing the reality before him. Clayton Feldman of the Cutters acknowledged his team’s fans, holding up four fingers as he rode by.

On the final warmup lap, Ryan Kiel’s hands shifted from a grip on the inside of the handlebars to the outside. He bent at the waist, leaned in toward the front of the bike.

The pace began to pick up, as did the noise level.

He reached turn two. His legs quickened. The cheers escalated. He hit turn three and rounded turn four, accelerating into the first straightaway.

The fence separating the fans from the track shook. Ryan Kiel’s legs pumped, harder and harder, pounding down on the pedals. The screams reached a fever pitch, drowning out all possibility of thought.

Finally, the green flag waved.

***
Matt Kiel’s predictions came true. At lap four, the pace of the pack picked up considerably, and teams started falling off the lead wheel. Ryan Kiel keeps with the head group, sliding in and out of the front of the pack, drafting and pulling. After a crash behind him in lap eight, Ryan Kiel gets caught on the inside of the track — a dangerous position in the early laps, when less-experienced teams are still hanging on to the front wheel.

“Tell him to move up,” Matt Kiel yelled to his student coach, Josh Novick.

Novick held up a green, rectangular sign. “Elephant,” it read — one of the Goat’s code words. Ryan Kiel saw the sign as he passed the pit, and he nodded. He pulled out of the pack, surged ahead and began what is called a “burn,” or a sprint lap before making an exchange. Riders do this to make sure the rider taking the exchange has time to accelerate and keep with the lead group.

On lap 15, Gray Goat made its first exchange. Ryan Kiel flew in ahead of the lead group, pressing back on the pedal to brake just a few feet from Trogdon, who was receiving the exchange. As Ryan Kiel slides onto his training bike, coach Kim Gerbers placed a bag of ice on his neck and covered it with a towel.

He grabbed a Gu Energy Gel pack and settled into the saddle of his training bike. He has done his job for now.

“That’s exactly what we want,” Matt Kiel said.

As the race went on, the lead pack became smaller, but Gray Goat stayed with it.

The speed made mistakes nearly impossible to overcome. And on lap 62, Gray Goat made a costly one.

As Trogdon handed off an exchange to Matt Kiel, the bike slipped and crashed to the ground. Although Matt Kiel quickly picked up the bike and tried to catch up, the team was now more than half a lap behind the lead team, Phi Delta Theta. Seven laps later, Trogdon leaped back onto the bike, still a half lap down.

***
The team switched its strategy, putting in quick, sprinting sets on the bike in an attempt to grab hold of the lead wheel.

“Don’t get discouraged,” a lap timer for Gray Goat said to Matt Kiel. “You got this.”
On lap 78, something changed. The pace of the lead pack slowed. Gray Goat had a chance to catch up.

Ryan Kiel seized the opportunity, picking up his pace and getting the Goats within a quarter of a lap of the lead. Trogdon got on the bike at lap 81 and caught the pack.

Then, on lap 82, something else changed. A slight drizzle started. A fan pointed toward the sky to the left of the pit.

There, hanging above, were clouds dark as the cinders of the track.

Unless conditions became extremely poor or lightning is in the area, the race would continue. However, if the race was more than halfway over and conditions became too dangerous for racing, the team in front when the race ended would be declared the winner.

Those drizzles on lap 82 brought with them a shift in strategy for all of the teams on the lead lap. It wasn’t a matter of if it would pour. It was a matter of when. That meant no more drafting. No more pack riding. No more mistakes.

This was a race against the weather. And the race was on.

On lap 89, the sky opened up and the atmosphere around the stadium soared. Fans danced, shouted, cheered for the rain. And despite the downpour, despite the cinders kicking up into his teeth and glasses, on lap 93, Matt Kiel picked up the pace. He has to. This could be it.

Cutters started to pull away, gaining a half-lap lead by lap 100. Trogdon took the bike and sprinted to catch up. At lap 104, though, the race official near the finish line waved a red flag, signaling the race had been suspended because of inclement weather. The drizzle became a torrential downpour. Cutters, in an unceremonious fashion, won.

Then, the chants began.

“Let them race! Let them race! Let them race!”

The Goats urged the fans on, waving their arms in the air, imploring them to keep the moment going. Not that they needed to. The stadium was echoing with boos.

The far side of the stadium away from the finish line cleared as fans left. But the fans on the Gray Goat side remained. They refused to leave. They continued to chant. A boom of thunder and crash of lightning brought their roars to a new high.

Ryan Kiel rose his arms to the sky. Trogdon and Holthouse couldn’t help but smile. And Matt Kiel, wrapped in windbreakers, laughed, lips quivering from the cold.

Finally, at 3:53 p.m., they were rewarded. The announcement played over the speakers:

“The race will resume in 20 minutes.”

With that, the crowd exploded in applause and cheers.

The pace car took to the track again, leading the riders around the track once. The teams had their fastest riders on the track. They knew they won’t get a second delay.

“When it goes green, it’s gonna be a dead sprint,” Novick said.
After five laps under caution, the green flag waved again. And, once again, the rain picked up.

The fans cheered, and “Thunderstruck” by AC/DC played over the loudspeakers. As they sang along, it became clear nothing could stop this race. Cutters, which was a half lap up on lap 104, would have to start single-file, bike-to-bike, with the rest of the field behind.

Gray Goat, along with all of the other teams on the lead lap, was suddenly within feet of being in front. The race would go on, and nothing could quell the excitement of the restart.

Let it rain.

***
Matt Kiel was nearly in tears from pain when he got off the bike on lap 143, and the weather was wearing on the Goats, just as it was on every other team.

Gray Goat was starting to fall behind when, on lap 185, the team made a tactical decision. Trogdon, their sprinter, spoke with Gerbers. She looked to Ryan Kiel.

“Do you want to finish?” she asked.

Ryan Kiel replied with a nod. Then, Trogdon headed away from the pit to take what would have been the younger Kiel’s exchange.

Trogdon sprinted ahead, desperately trying to catch the lead group, which was nearly half a lap ahead. By lap 191, when Trogdon exchanged with Ryan Kiel, it looked as if there is no way for Gray Goat to get back into contention.

Then, a voice from the left of the pit shouted.

“Holy shit!”

***
Ryan Kiel is not a sprinter — he admits that much. He finished 33rd in Individual Time Trials. He was not supposed to be in the situation he was in, grinding against the rain to try to catch the lead leg of the race.

That’s how it worked out, though. At that point, it was all or nothing. He grabbed the bike. He buried his head. He gritted his teeth, covered in refuse from the track. He sprinted.

He caught them.

***
On lap 193, Ryan Kiel rode by his pit, right alongside the Cutters’ Feldman. They looked at each other and smiled.

On lap 195, Ryan Kiel came in for an exchange — the final one of the race for Gray Goat. It also happened to be the final exchange Matt Kiel will take as a student at IU.

For the first time in this race, the brothers completed an exchange together.

***
Matt Kiel battled to keep with the front group, but, in the end, Eric Young of Cutters proved he was the fastest in the field. Cutters won its fourth consecutive championship, with Gray Goat finishing sixth.

After Matt Kiel reached his pit, completely exhausted, he did the first thing that came to his mind.

He stepped off of the bike, walked toward his brother, and they hugged.

A lot is made of the independent versus greek conflict in the Little 500. As the Cutters accepted their trophies and took the podium, they accepted the jeers of the fans.

Behind the podium, there was a different scene.

Beta, Gray Goat and Sigma Chi awaited accepting their trophies, only to be ushered away from the podium by members of the IU Student Foundation. The race officials had decided to cut ceremonies short because of the onset of more rain.

As the Beta riders begin to walk away, Ryan Kiel called after them.
“No,” he said. “We’re going up there.”

“I don’t know what to tell you,” an IU Student Foundation worker said.

A policeman walked over, blocking the stage. Then, Feldman came down the steps.
Ryan Kiel spoke with Feldman to the side of the podium. Then, Feldman climbed the steps of it once again.

He turned back toward the officer and the riders.

“You’re all on our team,” Feldman said. “Get up here.”

The officer looked at him and let the Betas, Gray Goat and Sigma Chi pass. They stood on that podium, arms around one another, as if they were all Kiel’s. Matt and Ryan couldn’t help but smile.

***
After the race, Matt Kiel was shivering from the cold — he was so chilled he could not control his tremors. He needed something to keep him warm.

“Ride home,” Novick suggested.

So Matt Kiel hopped on his bike, and, as the rain came down, he did what he’s done for nearly his entire life.

He rode.