The buggy alumni association’s coverage of the last 5 men’s course-record-breaking years continues this week with 1983. Remember, these buggy books are just a sample of the exhaustive collection we are compiling for distribution on a CD available on raceday.
The year was 1983, and CIA’s 1981 course record of 2:10.50 was still the time to beat. PiKA rose to that challenge and set the bar at 2:09 flat on a re-roll after an earlier collision with Beta. Legend has it that PiKA’s hill 3 pusher was in the bathroom in Porter hall until the last minute when he ran out and helped brake the record by 1.5 seconds. The new record marked the arrival at what would become a 25 year plateau in the 2:09 neighborhood. In fact, the average winning time from 1983-2007 was 2:09.1.