Sport & Motorsport
SBS Bank Tour of Southland stage winner: “It means a lot”.
From Andorra to Lumsden, Ben Airey’s stage win on the SBS Bank Tour of Southland was a dream come true today.
The Christchurch rider has been training in the small, landlocked country between Spain and Italy - a favoured base for professional athletes - for the past four months with this race especially on his mind.
While tour leader Matthew Wilson and his Advanced Personnel team focused on defending the orange jersey over the 178.5km stage from Invercargill to Lumsden, Airey (PowerNet) was part of a four-man breakaway which defied the odds for over 100km.
Along with Jack Drage (Creation Sign-Whoosh-NZ Cycling Project), Noah Hollamby (Onya Bike), Glenn Haden (Advanced Personnel) and Swiss rider Christoph Janssen (Open Country TES), the rebels combined well to capitalise on their team situations and general classification rankings.
“I was just joking around with my boys back in Christchurch this morning, saying I’m going to come away with a Tour of Southland stage win,” Airey said.
“It was all a bit of banter at the start, but I’ve been training pretty hard for the last four months. I’ve been in Andorra training with some triathletes and I had a good feeling that if I had the right opportunity, I’d get a win. It means a lot.”
Airey made his Southland tour debut in January’s rescheduled event, graduating with a greater appreciation about how to ride the front in a big race.
The 2026 Southland tour has its own challenges. With speeds in this week’s tour averaging closer to 50kmh than 40kmh, establishing a break is no easy feat.
“Especially when there’s lots of comms and people going for jerseys and you’re wearing a PowerNet jersey. They don’t really want you up the road. It was really hard. I was trying all morning, I probably went for a good 10 or 15 (efforts) before we finally got one to stick.”
As soon as he jumped away to comfortably win the sprint up Lumsden’s main street, Airey’s phone started to blow up with messages from well wishers.
“People dream of this and I’ve dreamed about it. So it’s pretty cool.”
Meanwhile, Wilson will now look forward to some redemption tomorrow after being protected by his team mates from the elements and the competition throughout stage five.
“It was a long day and the boys worked pretty hard for it, but it all went pretty much to plan,” he said.
“There were a couple of sections through the middle where the wind made it a little bit more difficult, but it was never anything that was going to split the pack,” Wilson said.
January’s race saw one of the most exciting finishes in Tour of Southland history when Wilson lost in a photo-finish to eventual champion Josh Burnett on Bluff Hill. It was a thrilling result for those watching, but not so much for Wilson. He’d love a second opportunity tomorrow.
The Cambridge rider enjoys a 1min 1sec lead over former grand tour rider Ben Dyball (Macaulay Ford-GoodTech), who also leads the over 35 standings, with fellow Australian Levi Hone (Team Brennan) third overall at 1min 10sec and the leading under 23 rider.
With the top 10 riders all comfortably within 3min of the lead, there is still a lot to pedal for with three stages and two days of racing to go.
Team Brennan continue to lead the Teams Classification, while Max Campbell (Macaulay Ford-GoodTech) has a two point lead over George Jackson (Creation Signs-Whoosh-NZ Cycling Project) in the Sprint Ace classification. Jeremy Presbury leads the King of the Mountain standings.