• Corrine Miller, a sophomore at Indiana University, has started a petition for a women’s remake of the film Breaking Away, which is based on the school’s well-known Little 500 men’s bike race.
  • Miller’s goal is to bring greater recognition to the women’s Little 500 race and encouraging more female students to participate.

The 1979 film Breaking Away is primarily a classic coming-of-age story. But secondarily? It’s a great movie about bike racing, based on the real-life Little 500 race at Indiana University.

Recognizing the film’s major role in popularizing the men’s race, Corrine Miller, a sophomore at the university, has started a petition calling for a remake of the film, but this time with a female cast.

Why? There’s a women’s Little 500 race as well, but it’s significantly less attended, even though the ticket for the event lets you watch both the men’s race and the women’s race. (Miller estimates the women’s race gets one-fifth of the spectators that the men’s race does.)

Miller believes that a female-focused remake would not only increase the attendance for the women’s race, but encourage more women at the university to try racing in it as well.

“The goals I have are to increase female involvement in the race, increase attendance at the women’s race, and chip away at the sexist beliefs that are so prevalent in Little 500 (and life),” Miller says in her online petition.

The Little 500 was started in 1951 by the school’s then president, Howdy Wilcox, as a way of raising scholarship money for working students. Inspired by the Indy 500, the Little 500 also features 200 laps for the men’s race, while the women now race 100 laps.

But it wasn’t until 37 years later that female students finally got their own tried-and-true edition of the race. There was an earlier, let’s say, spectacle, where women competed on tricycles, and not even on the same track.

“They didn’t think the women could handle a bicycle race, so they did a tricycle race in the gym,” Miller said.

Then in 1987, female students from the Kappa Alpha Theta sorority tried to qualify for the men’s race. They didn’t qualify, but they they did end up launching the first women’s Little 500 race the very next year.

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While the women are no longer relegated to riding tricycles, Miller says that many still consider the men’s race to be the “real race.” Making a movie about Little 500 with a focus on the women’s race instead could help change peoples’ perception of women’s cycling for the better.

“I understand that making a Hollywood movie is not something that would happen overnight,” Miller said. “In the meantime, we’ve started a conversation in the community about the sexism in the sport.”

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Jessica Coulon
Service and News Editor

When she’s not out riding her mountain bike, Jessica is an editor for Popular Mechanics. She was previously an editor for Bicycling magazine.