Depasse geared up for top finish at ITTs

Cutters senior rider Kevin Depasse is on a mission to win today’s Individual Time Trials at Bill Armstrong Stadium and he won’t hold anything back, he said.

Depasse is the top returning rider from last year’s official ITT standings.

He doesn’t have to worry about taking a backseat to his former teammate Eric Young, who graduated in 2011 and won three straight ITTs from 2009-11.

Former Delta Tau Delta rider RJ Stuart, who won ITTs last year and finished third in 2011, also graduated.

Phi Delta Theta alumnus Steven Sharp, who finished second last year and was a dominant rider since 2010, also graduated.

Now, it’s Depasse’s time to shine.

Depasse finished fourth in the last two ITTs. His four-lap ITT time of 2:23.35 last year was .8 seconds faster than Sigma Phi Epsilon’s Nick Torrance, who finished fifth.

Depasse and Torrance will be joined by Delta Tau Delta’s Paul Smith and Black Key Bulls’ Dan Kinn in the top men’s heat.

Smith competed in ITTs last year, edging out Depasse with a time of 2:23.34, Little 500 Race Director Jordan Bailey said.

Smith was ineligible to ride in the race for Delts because he had raced for Wright Cycling in 2011 and had to sit out a year when he transferred teams. His ITT time is not listed in the IU Student Foundation’s Little 500 results database.

In ITTs, four riders take the track at once, one at each of the four turns. From a stationary start, riders complete four laps. Riders are ranked based on the fastest four-lap time.

Torrance did not expect to finish anywhere near fifth last season.

After all, he was just a freshman who had only been on the bike for about six months.

“I really had no idea what I was doing,” Torrance said. “I was honestly just hoping to be about middle of the pack, hopefully upper. I guess I just pulled it out. I was definitely surprised by last year.”

Torrance traveled to Spain during the summer, preventing him from doing as much off-season training as he would have liked. However, “an extra year of experience obviously never hurt anybody,” he said.

“I’ve been working hard,” he said. “I know what I’m doing now. I’m looking for a better result this year.”

Sigma Nu senior Brice Brookshire has improved every year he has competed in ITTs.

Brookshire finished 48th his freshman year in 2010. Last season, he ended up 24th at ITTs, shaving nearly seven seconds off of his 2010 time.

This year, he said he hopes to finish in the top 10, but added that he simply wants to see improvement.

“I’ve trained like it’s my senior year,” Brookshire said. “I’m really excited to see what I can do.”

Brookshire has taken his training to a new level this offseason, deciding to continue his training for the entire year for the first time.

Now he said he is hoping to reap the rewards.

“This year I never took a break,” he said. “I just kept going through the summer and the fall. I never really stepped off the bike.

“That’d be the biggest difference and it’s made a huge improvement.”

The top five men’s heats run from 8:15-8:55 p.m. with the top heat of Smith, Depasse, Torrance and Kinn starting at 8:55 p.m.

At 8:45 p.m., Beta Theta Pi’s Will Kragie (7th last year), Cutters’ Tim Nixon (8th), Delta Tau Delta’s Phil Sojka (12th) and Theta Chi’s Turner Duncan (13th) will take the track.

All four Beta riders will ride in the top five heats.

Beta is the only team with more than three riders in those top heats. Delts has three of its riders in those five heats, as do the Cutters.

Torrance, the youngest person in the top heat, is looking forward to the challenge of racing against the top riders in the field.

“I tend to play to my competition,” he said. “If I see they’ve got those big names out there, the biggest competition in the field, I’m just going to get that much more pumped up and that much more ready to go.

“It’ll definitely help me this year being in a heat with the ‘big boys,’ as they say.”

Depasse is one of the big names Torrance will be riding alongside. For him, winning ITTs would be a boost going into the race.

“It’s a confidence builder, for sure, knowing you have the legs to beat everyone,” he said.