Fifteen Southland-based riders will line up when the 70th SBS Bank Tour of Southland rolls out of Queens Park on Sunday, headed by world championship silver medallist Tom Sexton.

Organisers have confirmed 17 teams and around 100 riders for the seven-day, 920km race, including two squads from Australia, McCarthy Homes-QCF and Team Brennan.

Sexton, fresh from his scratch race silver at the track world championships, rides for an SBS Wealth team built around four Invercargill riders. He is joined by Josh Van Den Arend, Anton O'Connell and Hayden Strong, alongside two Australian under-23s.

Quality Foods Southland-Gough Brothers brings 2023 winner Dan Gardner together with Invercargill under-23s Keryl Moutry and David Kwon and Hamilton sprinter Zakk Paterson, with former professional Tom Scully among the team's drivers.

Nick Kergozou, the Sprint Ace winner at January's rescheduled tour and a multiple stage winner, rides for Open Country TES with fellow Invercargill rider Hamish Keast and Swiss rider Christoph Janssen.

Marshall Erwood, who led the race after the opening day in January, rides for Creation Signs-Whoosh-NZ Cycling Project alongside Invercargill's Jeremy Presbury and former Sprint Ace and King of the Mountains winner George Jackson.

That team's driver is a familiar name. Defending champion Josh Burnett, whose professional contract rules him out of chasing a fourth title in five years, will support from the team car instead.

The other locals are Mathew Zenovich (Macaulay Ford-Goodtech), Liam Ramsey (Moo-Vestar), and Hamish Wallace and Gore's Liam O'Rourke (Team BSC).

Contenders

Cambridge's Matthew Wilson, runner-up to Burnett in each of the past two tours, returns with Advanced Personnel after a season of professional gravel and mountain bike racing in the United States. PowerNet fields Ollie Jones and Kiaan Watts, who won the Te Anau stage in January, while Pista Corsa X-LAB's Dan Morton won January's stage into Lumsden.

The route

Racing starts on Sunday with the Riverside Rentals team time trial around Queens Park, followed by a 42km street race. Monday's 166km stage from Invercargill to Gore skirts the Hokonui Hills, passes through Waikaka and finishes at a new location beside East Gore School.

The race then heads to Te Anau, climbs to the Remarkables and returns to Lumsden, taking in the White Hill wind farm for the first time, before a stage to Bluff. The final day combines an individual time trial, moved this year to the outskirts of Winton, with the run into Invercargill's Gala Street on Saturday 7 November.

The return to Queens Park and Gala Street follows the storm-affected January edition, when the prologue and street race were shifted to Waikiwi.

Fourteen past champions, including eight-time winner Brian Fowler, three-time winner Warwick Dalton and two-time champions Jack Swart and Graeme Miller, gather for a Legends on Tour dinner on Friday night.

Race director Waine Harding said the event could not happen without its volunteers, many of them working their second tour in 2026. "We just couldn't have a race and we certainly wouldn't be celebrating 70 years without them," he said.