With a group of about 10 riders in the lead pack on lap 99, it looked as though it would be a sprint to the finish.
But a majority of that group was wiped out after a wreck on turn 3. It left just Liz Lieberman of Kappa Alpha Theta and Tabitha Sherwood of ?Phoenix Cycling.
All the riders who would challenge them for the lead now didn’t have a chance.
“I looked back, and I just saw Tabitha on my right and the rest of the field had crashed,” Lieberman said. “That’s unfortunate, but that’s just bike racing.”
The yellow flag was waved, and with just one lap to go, the race ended on a caution lap. Sherwood never got a chance to catch Lieberman.
Theta Cycling became Little 500 Champion for the second consecutive year.
The win gives Theta the most titles in women’s Little 500 history. They have six crowns since the race began in 1988, including back-to-back wins in 1994-95. Theta was champion in 2000, 2003 and most recently in 2014.
Lieberman, a senior riding in her last Little 500, said she was a little disappointed in how the race had to end but it didn’t take away from the result. Going into the race, Theta wanted to tire out the other riders and have Lieberman in at end for a sprint to the finish.
The Lieberman-Sherwood 1-2 finish mimicked that of both the Individual Time Trial and Miss-N-Out Spring Series events. Lieberman just edged out Sherwood in both.
While the other three Theta riders, Abby Rogers, Evelyn Malcomb and Maddie Lambert, will race next year, this was ?Lieberman’s last.
“It is such a phenomenal feeling to top off my senior year,” Lieberman said. “I worked really hard to get myself in this position to ?repeat. I couldn’t be ?happier.”
Lap 100 wasn’t the only caution lap of the day. A wreck early on, just three laps in, caused several riders from the back of the pack to go down. One minor crash put Melanzana, who qualified first last month, down two laps and unable to catch back up.
Ski Club Cycling, Delta Gamma, Gamma Phi Beta and Alpha Chi Omega maintained a spot in the lead pack for the majority of the race, but were all involved in the wreck at ?the end.
Delta Gamma finished third officially, with Cru in fourth and CSF fifth.
Theta knew going into the race that they’d have a big target on their back that comes with wearing the ?yellow jersey.
Rogers said it was important for them to push the pace from lap 80 to the end. The strategy worked.
“We tried to kind of pull forward and make everyone else hurt,” Rogers said. “From that point on, we just knew we had the fastest girl on the track.”
