‘Proud to wear the name’

Clayton Feldman wants everyone to know he is not a townie. None of the Cutters are.

Despite being one of the premier teams at IU’s most famous event, Feldman says he hears people confused about the team on a regular basis. They think the Cutters are Bloomington residents rather than students, like the team portrayed in the 1979 film “Breaking Away.”

“I get into a conversation with someone outside of Little Five and they always say, ‘Oh, you must not be a student here,’” Feldman, a senior, said. “You get used to that.”

Misconceptions aside, Feldman and his teammates can hardly be ignored. As nine-time Little 500 champions and two-time defending champions, Cutters enter this year’s race looking to join an elite club of back-to-back-to-back winners.

Only Phi Kappa Psi (1958 to 1960) and Delta Chi (1979 to 1981) have won three consecutive men’s races.

If one word could personify the Cutters’ program, it might be “powerhouse.” Since winning the team’s inaugural race in 1984, the Cutters have won almost 40 percent of the Little 500 races – nine out of 24 – and have quickly become the winningest team in the race’s 58-year history.

Despite “Breaking Away” causing some confusion about whether the team members are students or not, the film does offer one huge advantage: free advertising.

“Other teams are not necessarily outwardly envious,” Feldman said, “but it’s something they’d like to have, this publicity that’s free that just comes to you.”

The Cutters don’t recruit because interested riders seek out the team. They don’t cut riders either – they weed them out with intensive training programs geared toward success.

Sophomore Eric Young credits the team’s continuing success to a long line of competitive riders.

“The thing that might separate us from other teams is there is a lot of continuation from year to year,” Young said, adding most other winning teams have one or two good riders that only come along every so often.

This year exemplifies Young’s statement. While last year’s team featured all-star riders Sasha Land and Paul Sigfusson, the Cutters returned only one rider who participated in the ’08 race: Feldman, the team’s only senior.

Yet the new-look roster is nearly as strong. The team adds Young, junior Jason Eshleman, sophomore Zach Lusk and freshman Michael Schroeder to this year’s roster. Young competed for the Cutters last year, finishing third in the spring’s individual time trials, but did not make the race-day roster.

This year, Young won the time trial event on April 1, and four of the five team members finished in the top 50 out of 165 riders. At qualifications in March, the Cutters placed third, 0.3 seconds behind the pole position.

Starting from the front row, the Cutters will carry a bit of pride into race day. The ever-confident, always lighthearted team members know the other 32 teams will be gunning for them.

“We have a big ‘X’ on our back, that’s for certain,” Feldman said. “No one’s got a swagger like our team, and a lot of people don’t like it.”

“The girls’ teams like it,” Eshleman added.

At the track, the Cutters often feel like the enemy. Young said the primary reason opponents don’t like his team is because of its success.

“If it involves winning the previous two years, I guess I like that about this team,” Young said.

As the Cutters’ 25th-anniversary team seeks its third consecutive victory, Feldman wants to separate the 2009 version of the Cutters from the past champions.

“It’s something, that it’s very significant in a way, but this team isn’t going for three in a row,” Feldman said. “This team is going for its first win. The soul is always the same, but you change the arms and the legs and the heart.”

Despite their focus on the present, Feldman added that the team cannot forget about its predecessors.

“It’s definitely something where you are proud to wear the name, if for nothing else because of the success of the team,” Feldman said.