Historic Tour of Southland gets underway in Invercargill

1/11/2026 - Nelson’s Cameron Jones has made a seamless transition from the knobbly tyres to skinny ones to claim the orange jersey on the opening day of the 70th SBS Bank Tour of Southland.

The professional mountainbiker, fresh off a win in the Whaka 100 marathon in Rotorua last weekend, is part of a strong Advanced Personnel team which has grand designs for this historic edition of New Zealand’s grand tour.

Jones’ team won the prologue, a 4.2km team time trial around Queens Park in Invercargill, before backing up to finish second to Australian Max Campbell (Macaulay Ford-GoodTech) in the 42km street race.

“Everyone rode super well in the prologue and we decided to share the jerseys around today,” Jones said.