With under one week left until the first women’s Little 500 race with fans in three years, the final events and pre-race festivities have taken place. Three Spring Series events are in the books, as Individual Time Trials, Miss N Out and Team Pursuits all took place over a two-week period.
Individual Time Trials, more commonly known as ITTs, took place back on March 30. This event featured heats consisting of four riders, who each start in a different corner of the track and must complete four laps at the sound of the horn.
Senior Grace Williams of Melanzana Cycling won with a time of 2:51.07, edging out Teter’s Corrine Miller by less than a second. Melanzana Cycling finished in second place in Team Pursuits. Miller, a senior who was part of the Teter Cycling team that won the 2019 Little 500, crossed the finish line with a time of 2:51.47.
Senior Isabella Oganovich of Kappa Kappa Gamma, junior Jenna Rodgers of Alpha Chi Omega and senior Abby Hummels of Kappa Alpha Theta rounded out the top five.
Of the 112 female riders that competed in ITTs, only 11 broke under the three-minute mark after biking a mile on the cinder track inside Bill Armstrong Stadium. Three of those 11 riders belonged to the Kappa Alpha Theta team, the winners of both the qualifying and Team Pursuit events.
Hummels (2:54.95), senior Jessica Schlueter (2:55.14), and senior Olivia Hubbart (2:57.34) finished in fifth, sixth and eighth place, respectively. Kappa Alpha Theta, the eight-time champions of the race, will enter as the heavy favorite to win it all again Friday.
The Miss N Out event then took place a few days later on April 2. This event included a bracket-style format in which riders in last place on each lap were eliminated. After three laps, the remaining three riders in each heat advanced to the next round.
Sixteen heats took place at Miss N Out, with 96 riders grouped into pairs of six. The final ITT rankings decided where each team would end up for Little 500. At the end of the first round, the field was split in half as the top three riders in each heat advanced to the second round. The top two riders by seed in each heat all advanced to the second round.
The top two riders in the newly formed group of six then advanced to the semifinals. Eleven of the top 16 seeds found themselves in the semifinals as it took four laps to determine who would advance out of the second round.
The two semifinal heats consisted of eight riders each, with four from each advancing to the finals. In the end, Williams defended her ITT victory by following it up with this year’s Miss N Out title. Senior Jordan Ortman of the SKI cycling team finished second, and Hummels rounded out the podium in third.
The 34th running of the women’s Little 500 is scheduled for 4 p.m. Friday.
