3 Bella Veloce riders earn 4th place

There were almost too many stories from Friday's Little 500 about Bella Veloce -- a team that had little money and no coaching.\nBut a good start might actually be at the finish, where only three riders captured fourth place. Junior Nicole Williamson was sidelined with a broken collarbone, leaving three riders to do the work of four. Each individual needed to write her own heroic tale to make the fourth place story possible.\nAsk the riders, and they'll tell you there was no bigger hero on Friday than junior Abby Cooper. Known to her teammates as "Coach Coop," she served as bike mechanic, training coordinator and coach throughout the year. But on race day, her only job was to ride. And ride is what she did, accounting for more than 50 of the race's 100 laps.\n"Abby is the toughest rider out here," said senior Katy Ligler, teammate and best friend of Cooper. "She trains harder than anyone, and it definitely showed out here on the race track today."\nAbout halfway through her trek, Cooper laid almost motionless for three seconds from one of the rougher wrecks of the race. But with her entire right side charred from the track, and a mixture of blood and cinder rolling down her right arm, Cooper sprung up and rode on for another five laps.\nShe would eventually ride about 25 more laps, including the final five, leaving the wound unattended until well after the race's end.\n"Abby probably rode over 50 laps for us today," Ligler said. "She's just the strongest rider by far."\nIt's tough to contribute when sidelined by a collarbone injury, but Williamson managed by filling the void left from not having a coach.\n"Nikki was awesome," Cooper said. "We didn't want to do it with anyone else except for Nikki. She proved herself and she was just awesome -- she's exactly what we needed."\nWilliamson kept serious for the majority of the race, flashing signs on a dry erase board to remind her teammates of race strategy. But her status as teammate and friend might have bled through slightly, as signs that once gave indication of who to catch like "Black" or "Purple," lovingly turned to cheers and words of encouragement like, "Go Lig, Go."\n"I'm just so proud of them right now for doing the best they could -- I'm just so proud of us," she said. "Abby took a chunk out of her elbow. She went all out for us -- she's hardcore. Our whole team did awesome today. Mia did awesome in her pulls. Katy did awesome -- I don't know, we just followed our race plan from the beginning."\nSophomore Mia Williams did her part as well. Even though she said she prides herself in her distance-riding ability, every time she got on the bike, she was able to advance her team greatly with each of her two-lap sprints.\n"Mia was so key today," Ligler said. "She went in and did her two-lap sprints for us, and every time just kept us right where we were."\nBut the unsung hero of the day might have been Ligler.\nLigler's role on the team all year had been to get on the bike and maintain, and like Cooper, she played a key role off the track as motivator.\n"She did unbelievable," Williams said. "She's just a great teammate."\nNow, the only stories still untold are the ones of how the team managed to get to Friday's fourth-place finish without a coach or any strong funding.\n"I couldn't have done it without any of these girls," Cooper said.\n-- Contact Staff Writer Andy Romey at aromey@indiana.edu.