And this month even more than ever feels like a pivotal point in our preparations for Wollongong's largest ever event. In many ways, we are now standing on the launching pad.

On June 4 we revealed the exciting new brand and identity for the World Championships. That was the culmination of six months' work, bringing together the best of Wollongong and Cycling, and presenting that through a great set of new brand assets, including a bold symbol, striking 'look' graphics, the UCI brand template, and our tag line for the event - Ride of Your Life.

Read more: World championships to provide a cycling legacy for city

I am particularly excited by our "W22" bike symbol. It brings together the 22 for its wheels, and a "W" for Wollongong in such a strong, clean way. For me, it is the perfect combination of time and place.

Our brand is really the cornerstone, or the 'north star' if you like, for all our event planning.

It represents the particular type of 'positive energy' that comes from Wollongong - from the way the escarpment folds around the city and ocean and the lifestyle that those features create. And from the warmth and down to earth nature of the people here.

That idea is what we will use to differentiate this edition of the UCI Road World Championships - from previous Road World Championships, and from the terrific raft of other World Championship events taking place in New South Wales over the next couple of years.

It will flavour the whole way in which the event is designed and presented - for the people of the Illawarra, for hundreds of thousands of visiting spectators, and for a worldwide audience of hundreds of millions.

In many ways it is the brand, together with the course and the program that we will announce in the coming months, that makes the event "real".

So being able to unveil it, and for it to have been so enthusiastically received - both at home and around Australia and internationally - gives us a real boost as we begin to put it to work in earnest for the event and for Wollongong.

It's also exciting to be able to finally be able to share the brand with the people of Wollongong, and invite them to embrace and adopt it as their own.

We really hope that this brand can become synonymous with Wollongong as a destination, and all that the locals know is so special about this place.

Our incredible lifestyle, the warmth of our community, and increasingly Wollongong's reputation for innovation. And of course, the growing recognition that Wollongong is just an incredible place to ride a bike.

So I hope this brand is one which the people of Wollongong will be really proud to wear, and one which the hundreds of thousands of visitors at the event will take home to remind them of a lot of very fond memories that they had while they were here with us in Wollongong in 2022. And the timing of our launch couldn't be better, because the weeks ahead offer important opportunities to start to bring the brand to life.

Read more: Riders celebrate opening of new Minnamurra Bike Skills Track

Off the back of World Bicycle Day, our brand launch was closely followed by this week's extraordinary announcements by the NSW Government, of their groundbreaking investment in cycling tourism product in Wollongong.

Creating a formal mountain bike trail from Mount Keira to Mount Kembla is both a ringing endorsement and a wonderful showcase for Wollongong's recently awarded UCI Bike City status. The Bike City label will also reflect our event brand, and you will start to see it appearing on these kinds of new cycling experiences around town for years to come.

Next week sees the start of the world's most famous annual Road Cycling race, the Tour de France.

We are exploring ways to share our new brand with every cycling enthusiast in Australia, and indeed the world, while their eyes are focused on the Tour, and then on the 2021 edition of the UCI Road World Championships, in Flanders, in Belgium, in September. The Flanders event will mark just 12 months to go until Wollongong's own moment in the sun next September.

This month has been a big one on that journey, and we have taken some very important steps. The road from here to Wollongong 2022 will be an incredible ride for the whole Wollongong community, with unprecedented opportunities and the chance to celebrate everything that makes this part of the world such a wonderful place to live, work, play and visit.

If you haven't already, now is the perfect time to get on board for the "Ride of your life".

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