Polesitters sputter to 13th-place finish

The headache started on Turn 2 of the 10th lap.\nIt never ended.\nPhi Gamma Delta, besieged with mechanical malfunctions and messy crashes sputtered through the 200-lap men's Little 500 race, finishing in 13th place, its worst showing since 1993.\n"It was a long day," senior and rider Todd Cornelius said. "But it's just a bike race."\nThe Fijis popped three chains, tangled in two wrecks and were stalled by a 10-second penalty. Midway through the race, the team which has finished second the past two years and won the race six times was left to ride with the pack, stay to the outside and mind its business. By race's end, the four Fiji riders, speckled in black cinders from the Bill Armstrong Stadium track, looked tired. \nAnd crushed. \n"It's disappointing as hell," sophomore and rider Adam Shields said. "We knew we could race with (the leaders)." \nIt started when Cornelius' Mongoose bicycle ran over a Sigma Nu rider after the Sigma Nu rider lost his groove on the 10th lap, a crash that also involved No. 2 qualifier Delta Chi. Cornelius was able to return to racing, but was nearly a half-lap down to Sigma Phi Epsilon, which led at that point.\nCornelius, riding the next 15 laps, was able to bring Fiji back into the lead pack. But a second crash on Lap 53 removed the Fijis from serious contention.\nFiji fell to the cinders for the second time between Turns 1 and 2, breaking a chain, forcing it to walk its bike around Turn 2 and down the back straightaway while Cornelius ran across the infield from Fiji's pit with a spare bike.\n"We were up there," Shields said. "But when the chain came off, we lost so much time just coasting."\nAlready a lap down, the Fijis were assessed a 10-second penalty for "creeping" on the field during the full-course caution that followed the Lap 53 incident. Now, they were down two laps, and left to ride alongside the leaders, instead of with them.\n"I don't think we completely showed up today," said Cornelius, who will return to ride next year."\nSeven laps later, with the penalty already served, Cornelius broke another chain heading into Turn 1. Already past the Fiji pit, Cornelius was helpless through the course's first two turns with his hands in the air, a frustrated signal to his pit. For the second time, a green-jerseyed rider was running across the infield in the aid of a teammate.\n"We had some bad luck, but that's part of it," said Fiji coach Troy Lewis. "You can train for everything in the world, but you can't train for that specific instance"