They pedal faster than a football player sprints the 40-yard dash. They end up in packs around tight turns and they are almost always drifting off the tire in front of them, so it's no surprise, like in all good races, that there are some epic crashes.
Let's start with 2004.
It was lap 199 of 200. There were six teams riding in a pack to make the final sprint home. Only two turns on the field remained when FIJI and Team Major Taylor bumped handles. They went down, taking out Briscoe and Acacia with them.
Hans Arnesen of Alpha Tau Omega and the Cutters were in front of the mess.
"I didn't know at the time that it even happened," Arnesen said. I knew that there were five or six of us going into the last lap and it was going to be tight and competitive. Once I saw it was just the Cutter rider and I sprinting, I knew something had happened. I watched the tape right after the race. I've never seen anything like that on the last lap."'
The Cutters ended up winning the 2004 race with Arensen and ATO finishing second.
In 2005, Arnesen wasn't so lucky on race day.
An Indy 500 race car had led the three pace laps and since an Indy car only has two speeds: super fast or extremely slow, the race car chose slow. This caused all the riders to ride close during the pace laps.
The green flag waved. The first turn came and down they went, 23 riders of the 33 teams.
Arnesen was riding in fourth position when the wreck happened.
"As a cause of that on the first turn on the first lap I was riding close to Chas," Arnesen said about Phi Kappa Psi rider Chas Pall. "He happened to slid out on his back wheel. I came up closer to him so I needed to break in order to stop myself from hitting him. When I hit the break I was on he ground, I had no idea what had happened. There is so much adrenaline on that first lap that I was very surprised by what happened."
When the race was complete and ATO appeared fifth in the final standings, Arnesen realized he had been hit by so many bikes that some had left wounds on his chest and legs, puncturing his skin.
"I don't remember the sound but yea when they're running into you from behind at full speed you can definitely feel it," Arnesen said.
In Arnesen's fourth and final year as a Little 500 rider, he was almost in another wreck, but this time he avoided it.
Sammy cyclist Drew Kushnick was 80 laps into the 2006 men's Little 500 when he went to ride in to his pit.
"As I did that the guy in front of me, we rubbed wheels and I went straight into the infield and hit the hay bales mostly surrounding the pole with the lights and almost took out the leader of the race," Kushnick said.
The then-sophmore's bike flew out from under him as his face struck the pole and landed on the track. Kushnick luckily only suffered a bruised knee but he sat out for over 100 laps.
When Kushnick crashed, Arnesen was right behind him.
"I just wanted to get as far away from that because I didn't know where his bike was going to go or where he was going to land," Arnesen said. "I just wanted to stay in the race."
And now for your viewing pleasure:
