Beta Theta Pi wins amid controversy

Will Kragie only needed a little sunshine.

The Beta Theta Pi senior said he proclaimed two months ago that if the sun was shining on race day, his team would win.

On the final lap of Saturday’s sunny 63rd men’s Little 500, Kragie saw a sliver of sunshine, a tiny space separating Delta Tau Delta rider Paul Smith and the inside of the track. Kragie squeezed through it, passing Smith on the inside around Turn 3 to give Beta its first Little 500 championship in 49 years.

Delts riders believe Kragie rode into the gutter, the cement that separates the track from the infield, before making the pass on Smith, and are frustrated no call was made by the officials, Smith said.

“He opened up nicely. I took it,” Kragie said. “He was not happy I did. I said from the beginning it’s going to be a physical race if we’re going to win it. I’m not afraid to bump shoulders with anybody. I’m happy I threw down. I’m going to look back and say that I did everything that I could, and it worked.”

Delts finished second behind Beta as Smith came up just short in the two-team sprint to the finish line. Phi Delta Theta, Cutters and Black Key Bulls rounded out the top five. Wright Cycling won the Dixie Highway Award for the second consecutive year, finishing 11th after starting 31st.

For Beta fifth-year senior Eric Anderson, watching during the final two turns from the team’s pit located just before Turn 1 proved to be stressful.

“I saw Kragie kind of get the inside, and then they disappeared,” Anderson said, as the stage stood between his team’s pit and the final turn. “It took them forever to get here.
It was like the most suspenseful moment of my life. To see him come around — it’s gotten so loose out there that when I saw he had the inside line I knew he was going to hold it.”

Beta is the first team to win from the pole position since Cutters did in 2010. It is Beta’s second Little 500 championship, with its first coming in 1964.

“Next year was going to be the 50th anniversary of the last time Beta won,” Kragie said. “We were much more interested in celebrating a one-year anniversary of our victory.”

The race almost didn’t come down to a final sprint.

With 16 laps to go, Beta started to open up a large lead on the rest of the pack. With 11 laps to go, stadium announcer Chuck Crabb said Beta had an 11-second lead.
Then Smith went to work.

He hopped on the bike with 20 laps to go. With six laps to go, Smith had moved to within striking distance. With three laps to go, he had passed Beta’s Tom Laser.

“We were drilling it from behind them,” Smith said. “They were pretty far up. Phi Delts was killin’ it. I was killin’ it. BKB was. Cutters. Everybody was trying to bridge up to them. When they exchanged, I got close enough that I got to bridge solo to them.”
Kragie said the team never got too overjoyed when it had its large lead, and it never panicked when Smith made up the ground.

But Anderson was still shocked.

“We weren’t really expecting Paul to be able to do 20 laps like he did and catch us,” Anderson said. “When he caught Laser, my heart skipped a beat. I was like, ‘No! We were just up by half a lap! What happened?’”

Kragie got back on the bike with two laps to go. He wasn’t supposed to. That was Anderson’s slot in the rotation and the team had planned for him to complete the sprint. But he had problems with his legs cramping. So Kragie stepped in at the last minute.

“Kragie was Kragie and just got on there, head down, caught him and then made a hell of a move on the inside,” Anderson said.

Kragie said after the race that he really didn’t want to get on the bike. He thought he was too tired.

He took the first lap to stay on Smith’s wheel, knowing he would wait for the backstretch of the final lap to make his move.

Kragie recalled a race in St. Louis during Spring Break, in which it was a sprint between him and Smith. In that race, Kragie shared pulls with Smith, and Kragie felt like he handed him that race.

He wouldn’t let that happen again.

“I said, ‘You know what? I’m not letting this guy ride away with it again,’” Kragie said. “I got up to him. He pulled a lap. All I needed to do was close.”

Four years ago, when Anderson first joined Beta, the team had qualified 33rd and finished 29th the year before. In his fourth race for Beta, he basked in a sun-splashed Little 500 championship.

“It’s unbelievable,” he said. “This is the perfect ending to anyone’s college career. I can’t imagine it being any better than this.

“So many things have to go right for you to win this race. This still does not feel real. And I don’t know if it ever will.”