Sort of like rock and roll

From the 1960s to the 1980s Ormond participated in an unusual intercollegiate sport: tricycle racing, in which colleges raced homemade trikes from Portsea to the University.

The event had several challenges. Constructing the trike alone required significant mechanical and design expertise as teams carefully custom-modified shanks and experimented to create ever sleeker tricycles. This wasn’t always successful: some years the vehicle didn’t make the distance and other times parts had to be replaced en route.

Riding took skill too; in 1979 riders trained on the main drive, much to the alarm of car owners who had parked there, as trike pilots practised taking corners at speed. The event itself required daring, being raced on open roads and in city traffic across the more than 100km between Portsea and the University. Riders navigated trams, trucks and cars on St Kilda and Punt Rds and allegedly reached speeds of 60km/h on the hills around Frankston. There was even once a head-on collision between two Ormond entries. It took about 4hrs to complete the trek back to the University.

From the late 1970s, there began to be concerns about the safety and sustainability of the Intercollegiate Tricycle Race; riders chafed against the increasing traffic and what they saw as ‘insensitive rules.’ In 1986, the event was replaced with a billy cart race, which has its own special place in Ormond history.

For years afterwards the trikes remained in storage at Ormond, occasionally wheeled out for a nostalgic romp around the grounds. But one of the more unusual intercollegiate events, one once described by The Ormond Chronicle as ‘sort of like Rock and Roll without the commercialism and external direction’, was no more.