Editor's note: This story was originally published in 2024. We are republishing it as part of our coverage of the 2026 event.
Kerry Hellmuth showed up to Bloomington in the fall of 1987, an 18-year-old Wisconsin transplant who had fallen in love with the Indiana University campus, which on a sunny day was stunning with its flowering dogwoods, sugar maples and yellowwood trees.
She had visited other schools, and could have gotten into most of those schools, but IU was the only one she applied to. When she walked by the buildings crafted from the same limestone used to construct the Empire State Building, surrounded by majestic gardens, it felt like she was walking into the middle of a beautiful painting.
"I felt an immediate connection," said Hellmuth, now 54. "It was almost like a paradise."
When Hellmuth arrived to her room on the 11th floor, the top level of Willkie North, an all-female dorm tower which was the counterpart to the all-male Willkie South tower, her dad helped her unpack the family's VW Rabbit.
She and her roommate barely had time to settle in when a resident assistant, a senior named Crystal, called a welcome meeting for the 11th floor.
As the women sat with their entire college careers in front of them, Crystal talked about campus life, academia and extracurricular opportunities. She was particularly excited about a bike race Hellmuth had never heard of, the inaugural women's Little 500.
"Crystal said, 'We're going to have a dorm team and who wants to do it?'" Hellmuth said.
Hellmuth isn't sure what came over her, other than she was a definite tomboy who played just about every sport there was, trying to keep up with her two older brothers. She had never really cycled.
Still, when Crystal asked who was in, Hellmuth's hand immediately shot up. "So it was from the very start, from the very first day I was on campus, I committed to this bike race," she said.
Hellmuth had no idea at the time that she and her underdog Willkie Sprint dorm team would make IU history, a team of four freshmen winning the first women's Little 500 in front of 15,000 spectators at Bill Armstrong Stadium.
Hellmuth has written a book, “Willkie Sprint: A Story of Friendship, Love and Winning the First Women’s Little 500 Race," recounting that momentous race in April 1988, which was released this month.
"The story is not about winning a bike race," Hellmuth writes in the book. "It is about friendship, coming of age, laughter and love. This is my story. Lucky me."
The Little 500, the largest collegiate bike race in the United States, is held each spring on IU's campus, a competition patterned after its big brother of auto racing 56 miles north at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
Riders compete in 4-person teams around a quarter-mile cinder track at Bill Armstrong Stadium. The men’s race is 200 laps (50 miles) and the women’s 100 laps (25 miles). The race and its festivities are often referred to as “The World’s Greatest College Weekend."
But before Hellmuth and her Willkie Sprint team, there had never been a women's winner. There had never been a women's race.
Hellmuth credits her victory not just to her teammates but to Kappa Alpha Theta's team of women who tried to qualify for the Little 500 the year before. While there was no women's race in 1987, women were not excluded from racing in the men's event. But they had to qualify.
"They garnered all the support and they qualified, but then the people behind them bumped them out of that spot, so they ended up out of the top 33 teams," said Hellmuth. "But that momentum and energy, and they really fought for it after a long line of other women right before them."
Kappa Alpha Theta's grassroots' effort to land a spot in the men's race may have failed, but it prompted a buzz and a major push. Women deserved their own race. After all, the men's race had been around since 1951 and had even inspired the 1979 Academy Award winning movie "Breaking Away."
In years past, as part of the festivities, women were relegated to a trike race.