Day ‘to gauge trials support’

Andrew Mathieson
GEELONG Speed Trials organisers will gauge public support for returning the historic event to the city’s foreshore.
Speed trials director Gary Grant said attendance at a static display of past entries next week would be a guide to whether organisers should step up efforts to bring back the event.
“If we find there is no great interest in the event, it doesn’t make any sense to start looking at trying to run an event because it costs a huge amount of money,” Mr Grant said.
“You’d be naïve to take it on knowing it was likely to fail.”
The display, at Eastern Beach’s Ritchie Boulevard on November 19, will be part of Geelong Speed Trials’ 50th anniversary celebrations.
The last trials was in 2004 after the event fell out with City Hall.
Geelong’s council has cited “disruption to traffic and other activities on the waterfront” as a sticking point to restoring the trials.
Cith Hall has refused organisers’ request for a 10-year guarantee for the speed trials.
Mr Grant hoped the trials still had a place on Geelong’s major events calendar despite the City’s eagerness to promote other bayside events.
“We’re trying to work with the City,” he said.
“We’ve been working closely with people from (the City’s) events unit and hopefully they’ll take back the feedback that council needs.”
Mr Grant said the static display was only a small step to reviving the historic event, with the organising committee facing a lot of work to bringing back the trials.
“Otherwise, it’s a matter of putting the cart before the horse,” he said.
In August Mr Grant blamed ideology for the trials going into recess in 2005 after some councillors and officers “wanted to do their own things”.
Last year the City tabled at council an events precinct feasibility study that would investigate the viability of the trials on Ritchie Boulevard. Council will consider the study as a part of its review of Eastern Park management.