Penalties, wrecks doom Cutters

The more wrecks the Cutters got into Saturday, the blacker their yellow defending champion jerseys became from cinder.\nThe uniforms didn't need to be yellow -- the Cutters wouldn't repeat as champions.\nThe 2000 winners wrecked three times and were hurt by three penalties to strand them a lap behind the leaders throughout much of the men's 51st Little 500 race. The Cutters lingered in the top five after the first 30 laps, but a 20-second penalty for gaining track position during a caution period left the Cutters a lap behind and unable to recover. They finished seventh with a time of 2:17.05 hours.\nSenior rider Chris Sahagun said his team could have kept up with the top three teams, but the 20-second penalty he described as unfair cost them the race.\n"I felt we were better than those teams, but I guess we were caught cheating," Sahagun said. "I don't think the creeping penalty was merited."\nThe four rookies and one of their coaches said they felt they were punished more than other teams. Chi Phi was penalized five seconds for creeping on Lap 55, and Phi Gamma Delta 10 seconds for the same offense.\n"There was another team at the exact same time that got a 10-second penalty when they were with us," sophomore and rider Nick Pechacek said. "I think they weren't very impartial when they handed out penalties."\nThe Cutters assessed a total of 28 seconds worth of penalties for creeping, not attending a mandatory pre-race event and impeding -- obstructing faster riders from passing.\n"It's very arbitrary," said coach Jim Kirkham of the officiating. "The Cutters are definitely marked. People are watching our every move. I think that's part of being a Cutter. You're under the microscope."\nKirkham said second-place Teter was also hurt by unfair penalties. \n"I think Teter was punished a bit by teams creeping on them," Kirkham said. "Phi Delts crept on them a lot and didn't get penalized for it, and then they won the race. But both teams rode really well. I'm happy to see Teter up there battling it out."\nSenior rider Henrik Wahlberg started the race for the Cutters in the 25th position. He stuck to the rear of the lead pack with the first few laps of the race, and then charged to the beginning of the pack. The Cutters stuck with the leaders before falling behind after lap 35 once the five-second penalty was issued for impeding. By Lap 40, they were about a lap behind the leaders. Trying to catch up proved to be more frustrating than the 20-second penalty.\n"It's not so much the 20 seconds, it's the vicious circle of sitting out there so long without drafting off of anyone," Wahlberg said.\nWith their one-lap disadvantage, the Cutters often hung with the lead pack in the inside of the track ahead of teams on the lead lap. On one occasion, a Cutters rider didn't give way to a faster Sigma Phi Epsilon rider.\nKirkham said it was important for the Cutters to maintain position and keep riding hard when they were a lap behind. Wahlberg started, finished and logged most of the laps, more than 65, for the Cutters. Each of the four riders rode between five to 10 laps each exchange.\nThe Cutters wrecked three times, once on an exchange and twice on turns. Kirkham said he didn't think the wrecks were rookie mistakes, but thought the officiating could have been more objective.\n"I see a lot of mistakes," Kirkham said. "I see the way people officiated the race as very arbitrary. It's very subject to interpretation by people. Crashes are always your fault. Those are definitely mistakes, rookie or not. It's hard to win the race."\nSaturday's seventh-place finish is the Cutters' sixth consecutive top-10 finish and only their fourth finish outside the top five in 18 years. The Cutters last finished seventh in 1999.\n"We all wanted to win, and we laid everything out on the line and tried as hard as we could," Pechacek said. "Basically if we hadn't had that kind of penalty, we would have been up there with those three teams. We came here to win. We'll be back next year"