I'm Brian Buckey and with Greg Rosenstein, we are the new Little 500 writers for this year. We'll try to carry on what Mike and Chris started last year on this blog. We spent today at Bill Armstrong Stadium for qualifications.
It was an eventful day complete with surprises, crashes, and plenty of emotion. When everything was said and done the Sammys took the pole for the men and Teter took the women's pole. On the men's side, powers like Cutters, Black Key Bulls, Fiji and Dodd's House fell outside of the top ten. These teams raced early in the day when times were considerably slower. Team Major Taylor finished in second and Phi Psi in third each going later in the day. On the women's side, Delta Gamma and Kappa Delta finished second and third respectively. Times were generally slow compared to past years.
In a bizarre and unfortunate incident, an IUSF member walked out onto the track during Kappa Kappa Gamma's first run. Colleen Groth, a senior rider, ran into the IUSF member and wiped out injuring her arm. The Kappa's faulted their next attempt without Groth and had to attempt a run near the end. Eventually they qualified in 11th place. We overheard that Groth may have suffered a broken collar bone. She was wearing a brace on her arm later in the day, but we couldn't confirm her injury. You have to feel for Colleen who was in her final Little 500.
We'll post to the official results on the IUSF website as soon as they are posted. In the meantime, what are your initial reactions on the day? What kind of bearing will today's results have on the race?
