The ingredients of a perfect storm were there.
Seven teams were packed tightly together in the closing laps of the Little 500, seemingly headed for a historic seven-team sprint to the finish line. Each rider was biding his time, trying to determine when to make his sprint and break away from the pack.
But there was no sprint to the line — only carnage — and Black Key Bulls emerged from the wreckage as champions of the 64th men’s Little 500 at Bill Armstrong Stadium.
“It’s very satisfying,” Black Key Bulls rider Jacob Miller said. “I would be extremely disappointed with any other result, knowing we had a team that could win.”
Black Key Bulls rode on the inside of Beta Theta Pi at the lead of the peloton, with five teams riding directly behind. As the peloton exited Turn 3 and entered Turn 4, contact ensued at the front of the peloton.
Beta’s Chris Craig lost control of his bike and crashed. The five riders behind Craig had nowhere to go as he and his fallen bike blocked the track, causing a six-team pileup. Black Key Bulls’ Miller was left unscathed on the inside line.
Miller didn’t see the crash. As he checked behind his shoulder on the front stretch, he realized he was the only lead rider still up. He took the white and yellow flags simultaneously and was able to coast the final lap of the race, giving Black Key Bulls its first ever Little 500 victory.
“Craig caught a surge there before the barrier on Turn 3, so I just wanted to hold my line,” Miller said. “But at some point, I was like, ‘I’ve got to burst out my sprint now.’ But I was like, ‘I gotta hold my line.’ So, he was kind of riding on the outside and had half a wheel on me, and we just kind of touched handlebars and he fell. I didn’t see what happened behind me. I didn’t see everyone else went down.”
Black Key Bulls’ winning time was 2:09:35.419. Phi Delta Theta came in second place, Delta Tau Delta in third, Sigma Phi Epsilon in fourth and Phi Gamma Delta rounded out the top five after recovering from the crash.
Delta Tau Delta’s Paul Smith credited a strong headwind and a dry track for making for tricky riding conditions. The looseness of the track combined with the intensity of the riders had part in prompting the crash.
“It’s tense in there when there’s that many people,” Smith said. “You know something’s going to happen. I wouldn’t have expected a crash.”
Black Key Bulls was nearly not in the lead pack to begin with. With about 10 laps remaining in the race, a bad exchange in a busy pit area left senior captain Steven Gomez with some distance to make up.
He said he had to push harder than he had wanted, but he quickly caught up to the lead peloton.
Gomez would hand the bike off to Miller, who joined the rest of the sprinters where the crash would eventually decide the fate of the race.
“It was a hell of a race,” Phi Delta Theta’s Rob Lee said. “It’s part of Little Five. There’s a lot of luck that goes into winning this race. We did everything we could. We controlled the race, controlled the pace out front, attacked and pushed the pace. It just didn’t play out for us at the end. A few of us went down and BKB pulled away.”
Black Key Bulls entered the race as one of the favorites after capturing the white jersey with a win in Spring Series.
The team finished in the top 10 each of its first eight years since the team formed, finishing as high as third in 2007, but the self-proclaimed “People’s Champs” were never able to get over the hump and win the coveted Borg-Warner Trophy.
Miller was the only returning rider with race experience.
His teammates — Gomez, Spencer Brauchla and Jimmy Rosati — all trained with the team, but the depth of the independent Black Key Bulls team meant they would need to wait their turn.
For Gomez, a senior riding in his first and only Little 500, the wait was worth it to be crowned a champion of the Little 500.
“This whole team, we made sacrifices for three years,” he said. “We put everything into it. It’s validation that it was worth it. It’s a good day, and it’s a surreal feeling. Just happy.”
Follow reporter Sam Beishuizen on Twitter @Sam_Beishuizen.
