Great Victorian Bike Ride

The Great Victorian Bike Ride is organised as a single annual event usually of eight to nine days duration, taking place during late November and early December, at the start of the Australian summer. Participants on the 2009 Great Victorian Bike Ride The ride is supported and non-competitive, catering to riders of all ages and abilities, from young children to octogenarians, keen racers, fitness enthusiasts, riders with disabilities, and everyone in between. It is not, however, to be considered a "once-a-year" activity for the participants unless they are quite fit and or have had much endurance training. The route can often include long steep mountain roads, and is not recommended for cyclists with less than a moderate level of fitness. The oldest riders to participate were two 87-year-old men who did the ride in 2010. While most riders are from Victoria, cyclists from around Australia and the world also come to take part. Approximately one-third of the riders each year participate as part of school groups from about fifty different schools. Students are predominantly from the middle years of secondary school, and are accompanied on the ride by supervising teachers and parents. A number of riders who have later turned professional have taken part in the Great Vic as students, including former top female rider Anna Millward, and 2011 Tour de France winner Cadel Evans. Ride options The ride is structured as a nine-day event, typically starting on the last Saturday in November and finishing on the first Sunday in December, and including one rest day somewhere around the middle of the ride. Due to its length the Bicycle Network has for many years marketed the ride as "a week in another world". In 2010 it was estimated that each town hosting a night's stop took in more than A$150,000 from the visitors, with additional income coming from the ride organisers. There were also longer-term benefits because riders regularly returned later to revisit the towns and areas, often bringing others with them. ==Organisation==

football ground on the first night in 2012 Ride planning begins about a year-and-a-half before the actual event, with Bicycle Network organisers designing a route and arranging options with towns and communities along the route length. The following year's route however remains a secret until it is announced the night before the rest day on each Great Vic. Advance ticket sales are then usually made available to participants on the current ride, following which tickets officially go on sale the next May, in the year of the ride. Finer details continue to be finalised throughout the following year leading up to the ride itself. Bicycle Network staff and volunteers have developed the facilities and the logistics plans for catering for the needs of several thousand cyclists and volunteers on the move each day of the ride. This includes provision of three meals a day, toilets, showers, washing up facilities, and the transport of many tons of luggage and other equipment. Between the luggage trucks and trucks carrying the ride organisation equipment, portable toilets, showers, and other requirements, typically between fourteen and forty semi-trailer trucks accompany the ride each day. Bicycle Network additionally produce and market souvenir merchandise particular to each year's ride, including short and long-sleeved cycling jerseys, polo shirts, caps, and bicycle water bottles designed for use with bottle cages. Due to the ride structure, and its level of organisation and support, The Age newspaper has called The Great Vic "Arguably the world's greatest one-week cycling holiday". Accommodation Accommodation is camping style, with riders required to provide, set up, and pull down their own tent and sleeping gear each day. is set up each night to accommodate the thousands of participants; this is one of two ovals filled with the tents of the 5,000 riders at Anglesea on day 7 in 2009 Along with the food, water, and toilet facilities provided at the overnight campsites, portable shower facilities are also provided, as are dishwashing facilities which also double as clothes washing facilities before meal times. Bicycle Network also provides medical support, and for additional costs extra services such as massages and bicycle repairs, which are usually provided by an outside business. Nightly entertainment is provided, including live music performances in the Café de Canvas, movie screenings, a talent show, trivia nights, a meet and greet, and roving performers. The third was in 2014 when a man died after clipping the wheel of another bike and falling into the path of an overtaking truck. Occasionally other entrants have died of heart attacks, usually in their sleep. Hazard and direction signs, rest stops, and route marshals are organised for the ride each day. These include riding marshals who head out each day before participants to direct riders safely through pre-determined locations such as intersections and rest stops, and marshals on motorbikes who form the backbone of communications out on the course by monitoring rider progress and resolving issues as they occur (including first response medical support). A group of volunteer riders called WARBYs (We Are Right Behind You) ride throughout the field, providing emergency assistance for bicycle breakdowns and rider difficulties. Volunteers Many of the facilities and services provided on the ride are contributed by around 400 volunteers each year. Often volunteers will be under the guidance of paid employees, or assisting paid independent contractors in providing a service. Without the level of support provided by volunteer labour the cost of ride would become prohibitively expensive for many riders. ==Ride history==

Origin In America in the 1970s there had been a number of rides starting with the Great Six Day Bicycle Ride across the state of Iowa first held in 1973, which just 114 riders completed in its first year, but in its second year it jumped to 2,700 riders. The ride was promoted by The Des Moines Register newspaper and soon became an annual event, eventually becoming the ''Register's Annual Great Bike Ride Across Iowa'' (RAGBRAI) and had up to 16,000 riders. Although conditions were quite primitive, the ride nonetheless proved popular and attracted strong demand for a follow-up event the next year. Early success The second event in 1985 followed a nearly identical route as the first one, leading to a small decrease in the number of riders taking part to 1,900, the fewest in the event's history. However, as organisation improved and different routes began to be offered the ride soon became a well regarded annual event. A rest day was introduced for the third ride, and popularity quickly grew, with rider numbers rising by more than 500 a year. By the Great Victorian Bike Ride's fourth year in 1987, when it first covered a section of the spectacular Great Ocean Road, numbers had almost doubled from the early days to over 3,600. In the 6th event in 1989, following a not dissimilar route to the first two Great Vics, rider numbers had swelled to close to 5,000. The 8th ride in 1991 attracted a then record of nearly 6,000 riders for a route that included the full length of the Great Ocean Road for the first time, a number that still stands as the second highest participation rate in the event's history. • The 2007 ride finished from Melbourne in the small Gippsland town of Buchan. This was the furthest ever finish from Melbourne, and the only time the ride's finish has been significantly further away from Melbourne than its start. • For 2010, as an indication of the community-minded consciousness of the ride, the event travelled through areas that had been devastated by drought and 2009's Black Saturday bushfires. This was an effort to bring tourism and business back to the impacted communities, with a finish in the town of Marysville which had been almost completely destroyed in the conflagration. • The 30th anniversary Great Vic in 2013 again ventured back to the Great Ocean Road, with a first time ever visit to South Australia, starting in Mount Gambier. Participants were capped at 5,000 for the full route as in 2009, with an extra 1,000 tickets available for riders taking up a shorter ride option, although ultimately this ride did not sell out. The 2015 ride was similarly reduced to seven days riding, as well as the rest day and arrival day, making it clear that although Bicycle Network still publicise the GVBR as a nine-day ride, it has been reduced by one day since 2014. • In 2014 a third on-road death was recorded, and only the second due to an incident with a motor vehicle. A 65-year-old man from Echuca, Trevor Pearce, died when his bike clipped the wheel of another rider and he fell into the path of an overtaking truck. The accident took place at about 11.00am on Wednesday 3 December during day five of the ride on the Mansfield-Whitfield Road at the locality of Barwite, about from the finishing point for the day in Mansfield. • In 2017 the last two days of the ride were cancelled due to a forecast of a "super-storm" over those days, which was expected to cause a state-wide deluge. This was the first time on record that the ride had been shortened in this way. Some riders who had taken a three-day ride option therefore only had one day on the ride. The forecast weather event was ultimately less severe than expected, meaning the ride could have safely proceeded. • In August 2020 it was announced that the entire ride for that year had been officially cancelled for the first time in its history due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which was particularly severe in Victoria during the second half of the year. Despite plans to hold the ride in 2021, which was to follow the same route as the cancelled 2020 ride, that ride was also called off due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic situation in Victoria. • In 2022, an end to COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns and easing restrictions overall in relation to the pandemic saw a cut-down version of the ride offered in the autumn of that year as a replacement for the cancelled rides of the previous two years. Tagged "The Little Vic", it was a shortened three-day ride from Thursday, 31 March to Sunday, 3 April, and followed a section of route of the cancelled 2020 and 2021 rides. A new full version of the ride was also offered at the regular time towards the end of 2022, although this too saw some minor route changes prior to the ride due to excessively wet conditions. 2022 was also the first and only time two official Great Vics have been held in the same calendar year. Legacy The success of the Great Vic ultimately led to Bicycle Network organising other cycling events. This has included interstate and international equivalents of the Great Victorian Bike Ride which have run annually since 1990. These rides, now known as the Great Escapade, have visited most states of Australia, including Tasmania, Western Australia, New South Wales, South Australia, and Queensland, as well as other countries including New Zealand, New Caledonia, and Thailand. Bicycle Network also organises other popular rides, including the very successful Around the Bay in a Day event, which started in 1993 and now regularly involves over 10,000 riders. Other cycling organisations around Australia, such as Bicycle Queensland and Bicycle NSW, have also followed the lead of Bicycle Network to establish their own equivalents of the Great Vic at various times. The most successful of these is Cycle Queensland run by Bicycle Queensland, which has run as an annual event since 2002. Cycle Queensland runs for about over eight days in early September, typically attracting about 1,000 participants, with a record of 1,160 riders in 2008. ==Route history==

The table below indicates the history of ride, including routes, approximate distances and numbers of riders. Some of the figures provided are estimates. :7: In 2017 the final two days of the ride were cancelled due to the forecast of a "super-storm". ==References==