Host city battled to have name on cycling logo

Andrew Mathieson
HOST city Geelong was forced to negotiate its name onto a world cycling championships logo in the face of a marketing push to exclusively promote Melbourne, councillors have revealed
But Melbourne retained precedence on the UCI event logo despite hosting only the start of one race finishing hours later in Geelong.
The remaining six events in the Australian round of the championships will start and finish in Geelong.
Senior councillors said State Government exercised its power to keep Melbourne at the top of the logo.
“Geelong’s role in the championships is well highlighted by the fact that on the logo it also says ‘Geelong Host City’,” Mayor John Mitchell said.
“We’re more than comfortable with our role. The reality to all of this is that State Government has put an enormous amount of money into this event and a part of this event is supposed to be in Melbourne.”
The men’s events and women’s road and time-trial races will run around Geelong’s inner-city suburbs from September 28 to October 3.
Cr Mitchell said council had convinced the event’s organising committee to “indicate” Geelong was the real host.
“Originally Geelong was not on the logo, so we say we’ve negotiated our way there,” he said.
Geelong’s council had spent about $1.2 million to “support” the bid, including overseas travel and accommodation for the mayor and tourism portfolio-holder Cr Bruce Harwood.
City Hall estimated hosting the road cycling championships would cost $15 million but return more than $80 million to the region.
Cr Harwood said regional tourism would reap greater benefit from Melbourne’s name appearing on the logo rather than Geelong alone.
“If Geelong didn’t feature at all we would have been bitterly disappointed but the fact we are and that we are inked with such a well-known, international city like Melbourne will only help us market the event,” he said.
The official website for the cycling event is www.melbourne2010.com.au.
Cr Harwood will travel to a Tour of California before September in a last-ditch campaign to market Geelong.