But a new Australia-first advertising campaign has brought them all together, to show the multitudes of jobs, roles and backgrounds held by Wollongong cyclists.

Launched as the city's hosting duties for the world cycling championships wrapped up, the More Than A Cyclist campaign aims to combat some of the worrying attitudes which raised their head during the lead up to the UCI event.

Read more: New cardiac surgery service performs 300 lifesaving heart operations in Wollongong

Ironically, Kelly Andrews - CEO of Healthy Cities Illawarra which is running the grassroots campaign - says Wollongong became a worse place to cycle in the weeks before the international event hit town.

"There's a lot of feedback from people who use bikes around the threatening behaviour from motorists and other people who don't believe they have a rightful place to be on the road," she said.

"Right at the end, people seemed to get into the spirit of the race and enjoyed it.

"But from what cyclists tell me, they felt that the hostility was getting a bit worse with all the negative commentary in social media. They felt as though they were less and less welcome on the roads, and it was very upsetting and distressing."

She said cyclists were confronted by a barrage of threats online, as well as aggressive behaviour out on their bikes.

"With the race, people were saying they were going to throw thumbtacks out for the riders," she said.

"And for just an ordinary person getting out on their bike, we'd hear stories of people getting spat on, getting water thrown at them and verbally abuse, and that can be really psychologically distressing.

"It also might be not passing with adequate space, so you're supposed to give 1.5 metres to cyclists, and people report so many near misses."

"This can be very dangerous and creates a lot of conflict and personal psychological harm as well to these individuals, who are just actually riding a bike."

The More Than A Cyclist campaign features split photos of 14 Illawarra cyclists, showing the multiple facets of their lives outside of cycling.

It's based on a UK campaign of the same name, as well as research on the evidence of "othering" or dehumanising of cyclists.

"We noticed that a lot of other cycling campaigns or cycling safety often centre on road rules or punitive measures to get people to follow the road rules, and we wanted to take a different approach which was just to tell a human story," Ms Andrews said.

"There's the concept that motorists don't see the person on a bike as a real person, they just see them as a nuisance or as holding them up in traffic and that creates the danger."

To find the 14 people who would feature in the posters, Ms Andrews' team at Healthy Cities reached out to their networks, and also took a more unorthodox approach for some of the cyclists.

"We wanted to have a real diversity and range of people and professions, ages and genders and so forth," she said.

Also people who ride bikes for recreation and also for active transport to show. the real breadth of different people who use and bike. We wanted to dispel the myth that it's all lycra-clad MAMILs."

"We were literally chasing people down the streets in some cases, if we saw them commuting to work," she said.

"We're on the highway at Fairy Meadow and there was a man on an e-bike that we saw through our window everyday.

"He ended up being a GP that works down the road and travelled from the northern suburbs on his bike everyday.

"Another guy is a Harley Davidson mechanic who works down the road. We saw him riding his bike to work, and it turns out he's just a normal person and he rides a pushy to work."

Albion Park's Dale Wright, a community worker with Wollongong council who enjoys riding for exercise around Lake Illawarra, is also featured in the campaign.

Outside of being a cyclist, Mr Wright describes himself as a dad and role model to five beautiful children, a brother, a cousin to people all up and down the coast and a proud Yuin man. He picked up cycling after retiring from playing football, starting out with a bike picked up off the side of the road.

"I have a love/hate relationship with cycling: I hate getting up in the mornings to go for a ride, but I love the benefits afterwards," he said. "Cycling is the closest thing to flying for me."

Mr Wright said he wanted to get involved in the More Than A Cyclist campaign to keep cyclists and motorists safe.

"Some days when you're riding along the road, it can be a little bit dangerous out there, and there are road rules to abide by for cyclists and car drivers," he said.

"I want to say to the broader community that the people who ride bikes are actually people - we're on the road just trying to get some exercise or get to work, or on the bike path getting some exercise.

"I could be the person behind the wheel's friend, someone they work with in the community. We all just want to get home safe."

West Wollongong mental health education worker Clementina Velasco is also featured in the ads, and describes herself as a mother of a two-year-old with a background in community services and road safety.

While she has experience riding bikes for transport and exercise, both in Australia and overseas, these days Ms Velasco mostly rides for recreation and taking her daughter to the park.

She's also the administrator of the Bike Wollongong Facebook page, where cycling enthusiasts and casual riders meet online to share tips, frustrations and cycling news.

In the lead up to the cycling world championships, she put out a warning to page members, reminding them to keep themselves safe amid "anti-bike trolls and the aggressive behaviour and threats, both on and offline".

"Seeing the negativity and criticism, it really dehumanises people who ride bikes, so I think this campaign to put human faces to people on bikes is fantastic," she said.

Ms Andrews said the UCI event has provided the perfect time to capitalise on the frenetic discussions about the role of cycling in Wollongong.

"Now that all the professional cyclist have left we just wanted to bring the human face, to highlight that it's not just the lycra people, it's anyone," she said.

"I think it's also really important to acknowledge that somebody might be on a bike for 20 minutes of their day and then later in the afternoon, they'll be in a car."

"It's not like you have to pick one. These people have a registered motor vehicle which they use, and then at other times they might go for some exercise of have a short trip to work on a bike. You can be both. It's quite bizarre the way cyclists are treated."

She believes cars have become so entrenched in Australian culture that anything that "is seen to threaten the rightful place of the vehicle on the road" is attacked.

"Even if you're talking about petrol prices or speed zones or revenue raising with cameras... it dominates our culture," she said. "What we've lost sight of it that roads are there for the purpose of moving people from A to B, and they can move in a variety of ways."

With Wollongong now named as an official UCI Bike City, both Ms Andrews and Ms Velasco say there needs to be physical as well as the psychological change to keep cyclists safe and encourage more people to use active transport.

"Things are getting better, it's a matter of starting the conversation," Ms Andrews said.

"We are a bike city, and we need to improve the infrastructure to make it safer for people to bike and walk.

"There is lots of good work being doing at council and with Transport for NSW to redesign some streets and make it for appealing for people to walk and cycle for short trips."

She said boosting short trip on bikes would not only cut traffic, but would also improve people's health and the environment.

Ms Velasco said she thought Wollongong now had "a launchpad" to truly become a cycling destination.

"People have seen what opportunities being able to get around on a bike provides," she said.

"They've had a taste of cycling and, by the end of the [UCI] week we saw that a lot of people really liked it. I would hope that might lead to better infrastructure, and having safe separated bike lanes where the bike traffic is there."

"Having that infrastructure will make it more accessible for lots of different people.

"A lot of cycling advocacy focuses on that commute to work, but the evidence shows there are a lot of ways people use a bike.

The commute to work is very much a male commute. For women, people with disability, older people, they might trip chain with their bikes. They might use it to get to the shops, drop the kids to school, drop in on an elderly parent and check on them.

"They might only be on the bike for a kilometre here or two kilometres there, but having safe infrastructure is a lot more important because they are going more slowly, they're stopping for purchasing in the local economy."

While an event the size of the world championships is unlikely to return to the region any time soon, Ms Velasco said she hoped there would be more cycling-related programs on a regular basis.

"I took part in the community ride and it was just amazing to come around the corner on Crown Street and to see hundreds of people on bikes just riding up Corrimal Street and having ownership of the road," she said.

"There have been programs around the world where people close a major thoroughfare - so New York has a Summer Streets program where they close a big chunk of streets for a few Sunday afternoons in summer. It gives people an opportunity to play on their streets, connect with their neighbours and community and just see how things can be a little bit different."

She said the More Than A Cyclist campaign would help keep some of the momentum from the UCI going, which would hopefully eventually lead to physical changes on the roads.

"It shows that anybody can ride a bike, really and makes it accessible," she said.

"It shows that people who ride bikes are part of our community - even that middle-aged male in lycra, everyone is human and deserves respect on the road."

We've made it a whole lot easier for you to have your say. Our new comment platform requires only one log-in to access articles and to join the discussion on the Illawarra Mercury website. Find out how to register so you can enjoy civil, friendly and engaging discussions. Sign up for a subscription here.