Luke Tormoehlen had dirt in his teeth.
Delta Tau Delta’s senior captain had just kissed the finish line after winning his first Little 500.
Minutes prior, he earned the Borg-Warner trophy after his sprint to the finish put the young Delts team in the winner’s circle.
“I can’t even put it into words,” Tormoehlen said. “This is how I wanted it to happen. All of my hard work and dedication paid off.”
Tormoehlen’s sprint was just how the team said it wanted the end of the race to be set up.
“Crazy as it sounds, I compared it to a World War II bomb run,” Delts Coach Courtney Bishop said. “Everyone else but Luke were the fighter pilots just trying to get the bomber to the end.”
Tormoehlen was the bomber, sprinting away with the Delts’ second ever Little 500 victory.
The Delts hung close with the pack throughout the race in what was a back-and-forth affair. Late in the race, the Delts were right there when the lead pack started to shrink.
The Cutters at one point looked like they could break open the race, but Delts, Sigma Alpha Epsilon and the Black Key Bulls were able to close the gap.
On the final lap, the race was down to those three teams after Cutters fell back.
Turn two was when Tormoehlen made his mark.
“I just wanted to make a move depending on the pace coming out of turn two,” Tormoehlen said. “I wasn’t that fatigued going into the last lap thanks to my teammates. I knew if I accelerated out of there, I knew there was a good chance I could hold them off.”
In the previous two races, the Delts had been in position to win but came up short.
Tormoehlen said that fueled the team’s hunger this year.
The Delts were not the most experienced team in the field of 33.
The other teammates — freshman Griffin Casey and sophomores William Lussenhop and Jack Moore — had no race experience.
It didn’t show — each avoided getting involved in any crashes, and Casey put up a stellar performance by bridging the gap before Tormoehlen took over.
“Given that this team is young, excluding myself, we weren’t going to try to break away,” Tormoehlen said. “We were going to ride a smart race, and my teammates really responded. I’m proud of them because we wouldn’t be here without them.”
The rest of the team said they wouldn’t have been there without Tormoehlen.
“He was such a great leader throughout the entire year,” Casey said. “Everything he puts into it and how much he cares makes us work that much harder every day.”
The program, even after losing Tormoehlen, is on solid ground moving forward.
“The win is a continuation of the program’s sustainability,” Tormoehlen said. “A win solves everything.”
