Three wheels, will travel!
The Trike Races

It is often said at Trinity that if it's repeated more than twice, it counts as a tradition.

How far the University Trike Race extended back in time, and indeed how far forward beyond the 1970s, remains contested space. If the college had stumped up an entrant it certainly didn't make it to the pages of the Fleur de Lys prior to 1977. Nor did it extend beyond 1979.

But like a fleeting comet, it shone brightly in college life for those few moments it was with us.

The trike races had emerged from the University's engineering department in the late 1960s, almost a decade before Trinity got involved. It fell in to a hiatus in the early 1970s but was revived in 1976, at which point engineering student Peter Sloane (TC 1973) invited his kid brother Geoff and Harry Asche, both freshers that year, to join him on the chemical engineers' team.

It was an awakening.

'We had such fun in 1976, that we went to the TCAC with a proposal for a Trinity College entry in 1977', Harry recalls. 'The first thing we had to do was build our own trike.'

A race committee was formed. Planning commenced, the whole affair cloaked in that necessary shroud of discretion. Couldn't let our friends at Ormond get wind of the scheme.

Well, perhaps not so deserted. It was Fred Grimwade's (TC 1976) family-owned Glenaroura Homestead near Broadford, which proved a suitable location for the trike's construction.

Richard 'Clabbo' Clabburn, a boarding school colleague from Fred's Melbourne Grammar School days, was somewhat handy with a welder. Somewhat.

Over the course of a few weekends, with a certain amount of lubrication provided by our friends at Fosters, the tricycle's frame began to take shape. Some wheels from an old wheelchair purportedly last seeing action in the 1920s were acquired, a lick of paint, and there stood a machine ready to take on the roads.

After dinner in the Hall one night, Warden Revd Dr Evan Burge christened the three-wheeler with a sprinkling of lager and those immortal words:

With a course that began in the beachside township of Portsea, the intrepid cyclists raced their way back around the arch of the bay to Parkville and the University campus, a journey of some 100 kilometres. This distance was covered by a race 'team' that would swap riders every 200 metres or so for the entire trip, that for most teams would be no fewer than four hours to make it back to campus.

The trick lay in the changeovers. The rider would have to ease themselves off the seat and stand on the back of the trike frame while the incoming, replacement rider - running alongside - lept on to the trike and performed the reverse manoeuvre on the opposing side.

'On the level you swapped every 50-100m', Geoff Sloane (TC 1976) recounts, 'so the changeovers were critical. Cars would then pick up the rider after their ride and drop them off ahead of the trike.'

That is, if the riders - or their trikes - even made the distance.

Such was almost the case that first year. The vehicle had been created with such haste that there'd been little opportunity for the race team to get sufficient road-time on the wheels.

Last minute training was scheduled at the family property of Rick Potter (TC 1975) at Dromana, followed by the obligatory pre-race gathering at the Portsea Pub before retiring back to Red Hill, to the family property of Mandy Davey (TC 1977).

As the sun crested Arthur's Seat the following morning and bathed the peninsula in its warm glow, the team readied themselves for the 7.30am start. All was going well for the first 10 miles until Clabbo's welding proved not quite up to the task. A pitstop was required.