Ride Wollongong Festival of Cycling has huge potential as an annual event, with riders and businesses eager to celebrate the Gong's status as Australia’s first Bike City.

This year’s event – held last Sunday at Lang Park – featured a new flagship charity, with Ride4Rotary raising funds for much-loved local organisation Southern Youth and Family Services (SYFS), which supports disadvantaged youth and their families, including people who are homeless or at risk of being homeless.

The annual cycling festival – a legacy of the 2022 UCI Road World Championships – also featured food stalls and a community expo with the likes of Illawarra Bicycle Users Group (iBUG), a member-based volunteer organisation affiliated with Bicycle NSW.

iBUG president Ed Birt described Sunday's turn-out as “disappointing” but said overall Ride Wollongong was a feel-good affair, with three rides setting off at 8am and an all-abilities family ride around the lighthouse at 10am. 

Cunningham MP Alison Byrnes and Wollongong MP Paul Scully attended the official opening of the festival.

“We got to have a good chat with them about active transport, which is all good,” Ed said. “And met some nice people, got a few additional members on board for iBug, and sold a couple of T-shirts even. So all in all, it was a good day, but it was just a very, very quiet day.

"There really wasn't many people there at all.”

While community rides went ahead, the organisers had already, with “much disappointment”, cancelled 2025’s races: the Tour De Gong time trials and criterium.

“Despite our best efforts to promote the event through direct outreach, email and social media, registrations have remained much lower than expected, making it financially unviable to proceed. We understand this is disappointing news, and we sincerely apologise for any inconvenience caused,” the website post read.

“If it wasn't for those community-based rides, it [attendance] would have been even worse,” Ed said.

Record number support Ride4Rotary

In an email, Mark Emerton, CEO at event organiser Elite Energy, described the day as a “great success”.

“Although a little chilly and thankfully no rain, the numbers were up from last year, and with the Ride for Rotary aligned, we certainly had lots of happy riders and families.”

SYFS youth support worker Jason Saladino was happy with the outcome, saying: "The day itself was a great success and we had a record number of 198 people registered to ride in Ride4Rotary across both our virtual and live events.”

SYFS has a revised target of $55K (down from the original $60K) with the fundraising portal open until Sunday, May 25. There is still time to help SYFS achieve its target – simply click here to donate and help fund SYFS’s critical employment, education and training programs for young people.

Lessons learned

Next year iBUG president Ed Birt would like to see a more collaborative approach to planning the event.

“The lesson to me is that the focus needs to be on bringing the community into it more effectively, broadening the appeal out to the whole of Wollongong and making sure that pubs and cafes and restaurants and other people from outside the area know it's happening.”

iBUG members have suggested bringing in cafes and breweries, live music, more arts and culture tie-ins, activating bike paths and putting on bike-themed events across the city.

“I think we can have a really great weekend. We don't want to lose it, but it's just not quite hitting the mark yet," Ed said.

“We can definitely do better.”

'You wouldn’t have a vegan festival sponsored by the beef industry'

Ride Wollongong had a controversial start in 2023, when the event launched with a publicity stunt featuring the then Lord Mayor Gordon Bradbery riding a tandem bicycle with a coal miner from event sponsor South32.

The launch stunt – held about two weeks after the mining company agreed to a record $2.9 million payout after draining water from the Sydney catchment without a licence – attracted publicity for all the wrong reasons, with a Climate Council expert calling it ’sportwashing’ and locals dubbing it a ‘bikewash’.

South32 has since sold its Illawarra assets, including the Appin and Dendrobium mines, to GM3 but unease in the climate-conscious cycling community remains.   

“We’ve got a pretty savvy citizenry these days,” Ed said.

“iBUG has many members who flat out refuse to participate, and essentially silently boycott the event due to the sponsorship of a cycling event by a fossil fuel company. It’s pretty tone deaf and while I realise sponsorship dollars are hard to come by, if we want these events to be a success this is a definite consideration.

“You wouldn’t have a vegan festival sponsored by the beef industry – a large proportion of cyclists are concerned about climate change and the effects on the environment of our continued reliance on fossil fuels so I would suggest alternative sponsorship would be a great idea if we really want a broad base of participation in the event, which ought to be an inclusive celebration of cycling for our city.”

Foreshore streets closed for Ride Wollongong

Sunday's event shut several city streets so riders could safely navigate the 10km, 20km and 29km routes, with closures in place from 7-11.30am on Endeavour Drive at Cliff Road, and Marine Drive between Cliff Road and Crown Street. 

Ultimately, it’s hard to say why participation was not better. Was it predictions of rain (which held off), a silent boycott or something as simple as a lack of publicity?

“Many people I spoke to said they hadn't seen anything about it,” Ed said. “They didn't know it was on.”

In the lead up to the festival, Wollongong City Council – which funds Destination Wollongong – referred questions to the tourism organisation, who referred questions to organiser Elite Energy Events, who did not answer questions about the sponsorship amount, event publicity or the final number of attendees.

The Illawarra Flame did not receive publicity material ahead of the event and was advised that Elite Energy does not usually have a media list.