Josh Burnett has become just the sixth rider to win three or more SBS Bank Tour of Southland titles after surviving a frenetic final day today.<\/p>\n
Burnett (PowerNet) started the day with a 19sec lead over Cambridge\u2019s Matthew Wilson (Advanced Personnel Cycling Team), but an outstanding individual time trial by Wilson in the morning saw him take the stage victory and cut the lead to just 10sec heading into the final 77km stage from Winton to Invercargill.<\/p>\n
The fast and furious stage was lashed by wind and rain throughout, with Wilson making a bold attack on the penultimate lap of the tour\u2019s Waikiwi circuit finish before the two frontrunners finished safely in the bunch to repeat the one-two finish they recorded in 2024.<\/p>\n
The final stage was won by Southland\u2019s Nick Kergozou, the second time he has won the finale.<\/p>\n
Burnett\u2019s name now joins the likes of Warwick Dalton, Tino Tabak, Brian Fowler, Hayden Roulston and Michael Vink as riders who have won New Zealand\u2019s most prestigious stage race three or more times.<\/p>\n
It almost didn\u2019t happen, with Burnett originally ruled out of the November event by a badly broken arm and only coming back into the equation when an extreme weather event meant the 2025 edition was postponed until January.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was just planning on helping the Mito-Q boys out and cleaning their bikes. To get this opportunity, I\u2019m super grateful to PowerNet, it\u2019s such a well-run team. Both on and off the bike we\u2019ve had such a good time this week. It\u2019s a massive credit to Aaron (Sinclair) who has put this team together for the past few years. All I\u2019ve had to think about is riding my bike.\u201d<\/p>\n
Burnett, who also won the King of the Mountain classification, paid credit to his team mates, who were challenged throughout the week, particularly after losing team captain Ollie Jones to a crash on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor sure there were some expectations on my shoulders all week but I think it was mainly transferred onto my team mates, making them ride the front for three days, so a big shout out to those boys because without them I wouldn\u2019t have had the chance to contest the stages or be in contention.\u201d<\/p>\n
Burnett highlighted the battle he had with Wilson for the second Southland tour in a row. The pair sparred throughout the week, especially with one-two finishes on both the Remarkables and Bluff Hill finishes. Daniel Whitehouse (Quality Food Southland\/Gough Brothers) was third overall at 1min 38sec.<\/p>\n
\u201cMassive credit to Matt because he is super strong and I\u2019m sure he\u2019s going to win a Southland one day, that\u2019s for sure.\u201d<\/p>\n
To get the chance to return from riding for his Spanish professional team, Burgos Burpellet BH, and win his home race was something special, Burnett said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt definitely hasn\u2019t sunk in. I was just taking it day by day and I\u2019m just really proud to be from this region,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s no other bike race in the world where I get this amount of support so I\u2019ve got to lap it up where I can. In Spain I can\u2019t even read the signs so when I\u2019m here I make the most of it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Kergozou (Open Country-TES) was proud to win the final stage and claim his fourth Sprint Ace title in his ninth Southland tour.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m ecstatic with that. Matt Wilson was putting it in the gutter pretty hard. He was throwing it all out there and I knew I just had to follow to keep the sprint jersey alive.\u201d<\/p>\n
Timaru\u2019s Noah Hollamby (Onya Bike) completed an outstanding debut Tour of Southland, winning the under 23 jersey and finishing fourth overall. Australian Ben Dyball (Macaulay Ford-Good Tech Team) was the leading over 35 rider and fifth overall.<\/p>\n
Macaulay Ford-Good Tech Team won the teams classification, while Christchurch\u2019s James Krzanich (Lattitude Cycling Team) was named the Most Combative rider for the final stage and the tour overall.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Josh Burnett has become just the sixth rider to win three or more SBS Bank Tour of Southland…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":429770,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[445],"tags":[49,48,635,82],"class_list":["post-429769","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-cycling","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429769","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=429769"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429769\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/429770"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=429769"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=429769"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=429769"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}