Riders face harsh wrecks during Little 500

Every year, Little 500 cyclists strategize, ride aggressively and pedal in a pack in hopes of winning it all. Mistakes are made. Tires and handle bars collide. We’re left with a memory of tires, bike frames and student-athletes flying into the air.

What they’re left with are the stories and the cinder scars to prove them.

The one and only
Senior Matt Woerner felt chills go up his arms as the names of the Little 500 women’s teams were announced.

Woerner has spent almost four years in Bloomington. He had never seen the races that make up the World’s Greatest College Weekend, but he was set to pedal in the men’s race the next day.

His team, #JungleExpress, was comprised completely of rookie riders who decided in the fall that the traditional IU bike race seemed like a great way to end their time in
Bloomington.

At around lap 15 of 200, Woerner made a clean exchange with his teammate and pedaled his first lap on the cinder track. Then he pedaled his second. He said he was excited to be racing in the Little 500, and maybe he was too aggressive. But lap three didn’t go as smoothly as laps one and two.

As Woerner rounded the backstretch into turn three, his front tire overlapped with the back tire of the bicycle in front of him.

“The tires just got locked up,” Woerner said. “They were just stuck like glue.”

He knew then he was going to crash.

He heard the crack of his helmet. He felt the burn of the cinders. Soon he was looking at the fenders of his bike.

Scrapes bled across his knees, his ankle and his shoulder.

And just like that, 15 minutes into the race, his Little 500 cycling career was over.
“It’s unfortunate, and I’m trying to remain positive, but it was just too short-lived,” the #JungleExpress rookie said.

The doctor on the infield refused to let him back in the race. His three rookie teammates rode 182 laps without him. They finished 24th.

“It was my first and last Little Five,” Woerner said. “It’s not what I wanted obviously, but just the whole atmosphere, just the journey to do it with these three guys. ...It’s just a great experience and an honor to be a part of it. I’d do it again.”

Fall down, get back up
Sophomore Tom Laser was rounding turn three when the first crash
happened.

It was lap 45 and a row in front of him a rider’s handle bars collided with the rider next to him, causing him to fall off balance to the track. Like a row of dominoes, the pack began dropping to the cinders when they came in contact with the falling bikes.

The rookie Beta rider was a few rows into the pack. There was no way to get out of it. He knew he was going down.

“It was kind of — brace yourself,” Laser said.

He flew off the bike and hit the cinders while the front tire of his bike popped off the frame. His teammate hopped on a bike and took off down the track while Laser walked back to his pit.

It was lap 100. Laser and a rider were working together to pull each other around the track. Laser went in for an exchange — at the same time as the rider he was working with.

“He clipped my wheel a little bit,” Laser said.

When he hit the cinders this time, he wasn’t able to brace himself. His head hit the track.

“I went down real hard,” Laser said. “Don’t really remember much.”

He realized his helmet was no longer on his head. His sunglasses were gone and, for some reason, he was looking at the crowd.

“The EMTs ran out and kind of asked me how I was,” Laser said. “I was a little out at that point, so they put me on the stretcher and took me off.”

In the medical tent, the EMTs asked Laser questions to see if he was showing signs of a concussion. He passed, and they told him if he could get up and walk around after a few minutes, they would let him decide if he wanted to return to the race.

Laser wasn’t going to waste a year of training watching the race from the tent.

“As soon as they told me they were going to let me make the decision, I was set on going back out,” Laser said. “I didn’t want to leave my teammates out there in the rain doing another 100 laps.”

Laser was rounding turn three; 58 laps had passed since the crash that caused him to be carried off in a stretcher.

He said his third crash was much like the first one.

“I believe contact was made maybe one or two rows in front of me. I saw a rider to my left go down and then to my right,” Laser said.

He hit the cinders, rolled and landed on his bike. His bike was still intact, so he picked it up, dusted himself off and jumped back on the pedals.

“When I jumped on the bike, I thought, ‘Really, three times?’” Laser said. “As I rode past my pit, I kind of shrugged at my coach. That’s how it goes, I guess.”

Laser said he didn’t sustain any major injuries and has no head pains. He now has bruises on his hips, back and shoulders and cuts all over. He’ll return to the bike in about a week.

“When you train for nine months or a year for something that goes by in two hours, you really want to get every moment of it,” Laser said.