UBC students have always had a knack for cooking up stress-busting escapades to balance the rigours of academic life. For science students in the ’90s, the Science Week Tricycle Race was a spectacular way to blow off steam.
One glorious afternoon each year, the students, their professors, and sometimes even the dean would surrender their dignity to hunker over the handlebars of children’s tricycles and put Newton’s Laws of Motion into practice, pedaling as if their lives (or tenures) depended on it. Boasting team names such as E.Colizers, Oingo Boingos, and Flagellar Propulsion, science departments would compete neck-and-neck for the best times in front of gleeful spectators.
The tricycle race made its debut in January 1988 as a fundraising event for the Science Undergraduate Society’s annual Science Week. Each team included four undergraduate students, one graduate student, and one professor or staff member. An article titled “Kinetic Insanity,” in The 432, a former student publication, deemed the inaugural race a “massive success.” All in all, 174 participants had made “complete fools of themselves” in front of hundreds of onlookers. The race also raised $1,100 for Children’s Hospital, along with donations of six stuffed toys and seven tricycles. The winning team, Computer Science’s Pascal Peddlers, wheeled away with a trophy, beer mugs, and a year’s worth of bragging rights. (Lucky for them it was a tricycle race and not a spelling bee.)
The race was a hit. The following January, Pharmacology entered five teams, and (not to be outdone) Computer Science entered seven. The competition was intense: tricycles broke in two and racers tumbled at the finish line. The structural integrity of the tricycles was, unfortunately, no match for the size of some contestants. A CBC television crew even showed up, deeming the race worthy of a slot on the six o’clock news.
While the tricycle race held its place on Science Week’s roster for years, enthusiasm for it as a standalone event gradually ground to a halt, and by 2000 it was absorbed into larger relay events.
However, the tiny three-wheelers continued to provide plenty of amusement: “Dean Klawe is still giddy from her team’s 3rd place finish in Games Day 2000,” reported The 432. “It was quite a sight—the Dean, peddling [sic] fiercely on her little bike, streamers whipping in the wind. We have pictures for blackmail… um… I mean entertainment purposes.”
Although the tricycle race has spun out of recent memory, a search through UBC’s archival photos brings back its most glorious moments, frozen in time: people falling off their miniature chariots; sweaty teams brandishing their trophies; and full-grown students with their knees scrunched up to meet the pedals, their smiles almost as outsized as they were.
