Alena Saili, PHOTO: GETTY IMAGES
Five Southlanders are representing the region on the world stage at the 2024 Summer Olympic Games in Paris.
Cyclists Nicole Shields and Tom Sexton will be making their Olympic debuts alongside javelin thrower Tori Peeters, while road cyclist Corbin Strong will be attending his second Games and Black Ferns sevens player Alena Saili made history wining her second gold medal in a Olympics games.
As well as their respective sporting codes, all five athletes have been supported over the years by SBS Bank Academy Southland, which provides strength and conditioning, athlete life, mental skills and nutrition advice to prepare Southland’s best young athletes for the national and international stage.
Alena Saili
Age:25
NZ Olympian #1488
Event:Sevens
First selected for the Black Ferns Sevens team in 2017 — her first year after leaving Southland Girls’ High School — Alena has made more than 120 appearances and scored more than 40 tries for the New Zealand women's sevens team. She was included as an injury replacement for the Gold Coast Commonwealth Games, winning a gold medal as the Black Ferns started a run which has seen them regularly dominate at the international level. After being inspired by the Black Ferns silver medal in Rio in 2016, she was part of the gold medal-winning team in Tokyo in 2021, just the second Southlander (and first female athlete) after Nathan Cohen to win an Olympic gold.
In 2022, she was part of the team which won silver at the Rugby World Cup Sevens in Cape Town and bronze at the Birmingham Commonwealth Games.
Saili played 24 games for the Black Ferns in their most recent world circuit, where they won the final four tournaments to top the standings before finishing third overall at the Grand Finale event in Madrid.
Corbin Strong
Age:24
NZ Olympian #1502
Event:Road race
After making his Olympic debut on the track with a ninth-placed finish in the madison in Tokyo three years ago, Strong will join team-mate Laurence Pithie to contest the road race in Paris. Strong won bronze in the team pursuit at the junior worlds in 2017 before winning the title the following year.
He became a senior world champion when he won the points race in 2020, as well as silver in the team pursuit, and in 2022 he won gold in the scratch race at the Commonwealth Games and silver in the elimination event at the world championships.
He joined a World Tour professional road team in 2022, making his Tour de France debut last year and has seven wins as a professional including the NZ Cycle Classic title, second place in Tour Down Under and stage wins in the Tours of Britain and Luxembourg.
The men’s and women’s road races in Paris will start and finish in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower, with the men's course taking in 273km with 2800m of climbing and 13 named ascents including the Côte de la butte Montmartre.
Saturday, August 3, 11am — men’s road race.
Tom Sexton
Age:25
Events:Team pursuit, madison
While Paris will be Sexton’s first Olympic Games, he is a veteran of Cycling NZ's endurance programme — even at the age of 25. A junior world champion in the team pursuit in 2016, where he also won silver in the two-person madison, Sexton has a string of World Cup team pursuit and madison titles to his credit.
He won bronze in the scratch race at the 2019 world championships and claimed gold in the team pursuit at the 2022 Commonwealth Games in Birmingham, also winning silver in the individual pursuit behind team-mate Aaron Gate.
The retirement of Regan Gough created the opportunity for Sexton to make the crucial starting position his own.
Sexton was part of the team pursuit squad which won bronze at last years world championships, marking the New Zealand team, which includes Gate, Campbell Stewart and Keegan Hornblow, as genuine medal contenders in Paris.
Monday, August 5, 5.27pm — men's team pursuit qualifying.
Nicole Shields
Nicole Shields
Age:24
Events:Team pursuit, madison, omnium.
Nicole Shields was born in Invercargill and got her start on the SIT Velodrome when she was 9-years-old.
When her family shifted to Clyde a year later her cycling focus shifted to the road, but after winning the national under 19 individual pursuit title in 2016 she was selected for the New Zealand team for the UCI world junior track cycling championships.
She was part of the team pursuit squad which claimed silver at the world champs in 2016 and 2017, beaten narrowly both times by Italy.
After moving to Cambridge to study a Bachelor of Business at Waikato University, Shields rode for a professional road team from 2020 to 2022 and was a travelling reserve for the pursuit team at the Tokyo Olympics. She then returned to the Cycling NZ endurance track programme to stake a claim for what will be her Olympic debut in Paris.
Shields is part of a women’s endurance quartet which also includes Bryony Botha, Ally Wollaston, and Emily Shearman who are the top ranked women's team pursuit, second on Olympic rankings in the two-rider madison and third in the omnium.
Their performances have been outstanding this year, with a new national record in the team pursuit.
Tuesday, August 6, 5.30pm — women's team pursuit qualifying
Tori Peeters
Tori Peeters
Age:30
Event:Javelin
Cambridge-based Tori Peeters grew up on a dairy farm near Gore and first picked up a javelin after watching older sister Stacey throwing at a St Peter’s College athletics day. She broke the New Zealand record for the first time in 2014 and has dominated the sport nationally for more than a decade.
Over the past few years she has started to turn that promise into international performances, throwing her way into a top-16 world ranking which earned her qualification for Paris.
Peeters put together an impressive series last year, reaching the podium in five European meets, along with the prestigious Seiko Golden Grand Prix in Yokohama, where she extended her New Zealand record to 63.26m.
A highlight last year was a silver medal at the Diamond League final in Oregon.
She was sixth at the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham in 2022 and missed out on the final at last year’s world championships in Budapest by just 7cm, finishing 13th overall.
Wednesday, August 7, 10.25am — women's javelin qualifying Group A
— Photos: Getty Images
