Good evening, bonsoir, e buonasera. Questa e storia vero:

Once upon a time, there was a little girl who wanted to run away to the circus and be an elephant trainer. She wanted to wear a tutu and have control over large animals.

Then, when she went to school, she wanted to be a doctor. She wanted to so much that went through six years of medical school, gave the Valedictory speech at graduation and went off to work in a hospital.

But then, in 2000, something happened.

She went and watched the Tour de France and decided she really wanted to ride a bike. She wanted to be a great cyclist who rode in a team and worked to get a great result.

So she went home, kept working as a doctor, and dilly-dallied in a few easy sports like rowing and ironman triathlon until 2006. People said she was too old, too heavy and too tall to be a good bike rider.

But the whole time, she wanted to be like the professional bike riders she'd seen: climbing the alpe d'Huez, racing the clock on her amazing time trial bike, and winning the world championships.

Then, for a few months each year in 2008/2009, she was lucky enough to ride in the Australian National team. She was indeed the oldest, heaviest and tallest woman in the squad, but she had the best bike!

She rode the great bike all over the world, in America, Canada, France, Italy and Switzerland and all was good with the world.

Then, she got her first pro contract, quit her job as a doctor and skipped off to Italy to start a whole new life of fun, friendship and being paid to see Europe.

She arrived in Toscana to live and ride with her Italian team. For the first month, she didn't understand a word they said, and nodded and smiled a lot. They thought she was pretty stupid.

When they raced the Tour of Flanders, there was a one hour meeting in Italian and all she understood was that she needed to be ‘sempre avanti' (always at the front).

She was so scared, that she rode at the front for as long as she could, for every race that she could. After all, her team leader was the reigning World Champion and there were all manner of other National champions on the team.

The bike that the team gave her was good, but there was no spare in her size, so she had to get through 182 days of racing it all over Europe - over cobbles in the rain, and over mountains in the women's Giro.

Inoltre, la ragazza è stata molto fortunata ad avere la generosa ospitalità di una famiglia italiana per la metà della stagione. senza questa bella coppia, lei non l'avrebbe fatto fino al Campionato del Mondo.

On the 183rd day, she gave the bike back to the Team Manager.

It looked like the car in the Blues Brothers, seconds before it fell apart on the street, but thankfully, she got it into his flashy Italian sports car in 3 pieces and never saw the bike again.

The girl was very tired, relieved to have survived and went back home to Australia having learned Italian the hard way.

Then a wonderful thing happened.

Parlee, Cycling Edge and SunGraphics put together a one of a kind bicycle for the girl to ride at the World Road Cycling Championships.

It was the most beautiful bike ever, and when the girl rode it on the Worlds course in Geelong for training, she felt completely new again.

A lot of people put a lot of time, energy, faith and support into every rider and every beautiful bike they are riding here in Melbourne and Geelong.

On behalf of Cycling Australia and the entire Australian Team we are all very proud that we have the opportunity to race on home soil and very grateful for the support we have received from everyone so far.

At Australia's World Road Cycling Championships, the women's road race is on Saturday.

For the first time my entire family, wonderful friends and steadfast sponsors will be there to witness me do all I can for the women's road team, and to thank them.

I'm Bridie O'Donnell and I ride a bike.