For a moment, the perfect storm had Chi Alpha alone in first.
At lap 158, Jazz Briggs was flying through the turns, with his team 16 seconds ahead of everyone else in the 2022 Little 500. Phi Kappa Psi, Phi Delta Theta, Sigma Phi Epsilon, Jetblach and Cutters all were half of a lap behind them in a bunched together pack that thought they were in front.
The training, the experience, and the drive for Chi Alpha to win the race were coming together.
Chase Madsen discusses the mentality a team aiming to win the Little 500 should have.
“That’s out of our control,” Chase Madsen said.
He recognized the luck and the difficulty involved in winning a race over 200 laps. Madsen joined Chi Alpha as a freshman, riding on a team that finished in 26th in 2019. The program started just one year before he arrived on campus at Indiana University, with a 21st place finish in 2018. COVID-19 meant that no race took place in 2020, interrupting the normal flow for a sophomore Little 500 rider.
When the race came back in May of 2021, only 23 teams raced as the delay and the pandemic limited training and participation.
When the fans and the one day in April returned, Madsen found himself as one of the most experienced riders in the field, entering his third race.
Chi Alpha senior Chase Madsen discusses how he uses his experience to help the team race in the 2022 Little 500.
Chi Alpha started the fan-less 2021 race in 3rd place, in the first row on the grid.
A strong spring series placed them high, but just weeks before the race they lost their best rider, Jazz Briggs, to a collarbone injury.
With no time to train another rider, Chi Alpha rode just three riders during the race, finishing in fourth place. Fourth offered them a strong platform to build from, with Briggs able to recover for one last race.
Before he could race again, he’d have to brush off the rust and fears that had set in after his injury.
Jazz Briggs discusses the first race he participated in after recovering from a broken collarbone.
The biggest and most pivotal moment of the 2022 Little 500 race came very late, when three teams crashed on the second to last lap to end what potentially was a seven-team sprint to the finish.
The front three teams avoided it, as did Chi Alpha, but not in the way they would have liked it. Their lead just thirty laps earlier had evaporated as the chasing pack put too much pressure on them to maintain the lead.
In the end, as Phi Kappa Psi, Gray Goat and Black Key Bulls crashed on lap 199, Chi Alpha could ride past safely, but finish in 7th, watching Phi Delta Theta raise the winners trophy at the end of the race.
Madsen, Briggs and senior rider Carson Coquyt rode their last races at Indiana University, but on either side of the pandemic, Chi Alpha climbed from 21st and 26th to 4th and 7th, primed to become less of a surprise, and more of a mainstay.
