Six Southlanders will represent New Zealand on the world stage as part of the 2024 Summer Olympic Games which get underway in Paris on July 26.

A total of 195 athletics will travel from New Zealand to compete at this year's summer Olympics 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 will be hoping to add another medal to the gold she won in Tokyo three years ago. And Te Anau born Lulu Sun will be representing New Zealand in tennis.

As well as their respective sporting codes, five of the athletes (excluding Lulu) have all 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.

This is the biggest representation of Academy Southland programme graduates at an Olympics. Interestingly Corbin, Tom, Alena and Nicole were all in the programme in 2016 with Tori joining in 2012.

The five Southland’s Olympic representatives (and when they are competing (NZ times)) are;

Alena Saili

Age: 25

NZ Olympian #1488

Event: sevens

Time: Monday, July 29, 4am Black Ferns v China, 7.30am Black Ferns v Canada

Time: Tuesday, July 30, 2.30am Black Ferns v Fiji.

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.

Alena 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.

The Black Ferns lost their semi-final to eventual winners Australia, before beating Canada to earn the bronze medal.

Corbin Strong. Photo: Israel Premier Tech

Corbin Strong

Age: 24

NZ Olympian #1502

Event: road race

Time: Saturday, August 3, 11am - men’s road race

After making his Olympic debut on the track with a ninth-placed finish in the madison in Tokyo three years ago, Corbin will join teammate Laurence Pithie to contest the road race in Paris.

Corbin 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 2,800 metres of climbing and 13 named ascents including the Côte de la butte Montmartre.

Tom Sexton

Age: 25

Events: team pursuit, madison

Time: Monday, August 5, 5.27pm - men’s team pursuit qualifying

While Paris will be Tom’s first Olympic Games, he is a veteran of Cycling NZ’s endurance programme - even at the tender age of 25.

A junior world champion in the team pursuit in 2016, where he also won silver in the two-person madison, Tom 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 teammate Aaron Gate.

The retirement of Regan Gough created the opportunity for Tom to make the crucial starting position his own.

Tom was part of the team pursuit squad which won bronze at last year’s world championships, marking the New Zealand team, which includes Gate, Campbell Stewart and Keegan Hornblow, as genuine medal contenders in Paris.

Nicole Shields

Age: 24

Events: team pursuit, madison, omnium

Time: Tuesday, August 6, 5.30pm - women’s team pursuit qualifying

Nicole 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 women’s 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.

Javelin thrower Tori Peeters in action at the 2023 World Athletics Championships in Budapest, Hungary. Photo: Michael Dawson/Athletics NZ

Tori Peeters

Age: 30

Event: javelin

Time: Wednesday, August 7, 10.25am - women’s javelin qualifying Group A

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 Peters 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.

Lulu Sun.

Lulu Sun

Age: 22

NZ Olympian #1488

Event: Tennis (womens doubles)

Time: Sunday, July 27, 28 and potentially 29, 30, 31, August 1, 4

Te Anau born, Lulu moved to Switzerland when she was 5. She has also lived in Florida, USA.

She is New Zealand's highest ranked (No.151) singles tennis player, having reached the women's single quarter-finals at Wimbledon earlier this year (2024).

Sun has qualified for a number of major tournaments including the Australian Open singles as well as winning her first WTA 1000 level match in Dubai.

Sun will compete in the women's doubles at this years Olympics with Erin Routliffe.

Southlanders at past Olympics

Nathan Cohen went down in history after winning gold alongside Joseph Sullivan in the men's double sculls at the 2012 London Olympics.

It was the first time a Southland athlete had won an Olympic gold - or a medal of any colour. Cohen and Sullivan were in fifth place at the halfway stage of the final but powered home over the last 500m of the race to overtake the Italian and Slovenian crews to claim gold.

Just 48 hours after Cohen's gold medal row, Storm Uru secured Southland's second Olympic medal, winning bronze in the men's lightweight double sculls with Peter Taylor.

It was a great achievement for the Kiwi duo, considering they had an unfavourable lane draw and the race had to be re- run, after an early equipment failure on the British boat.

The pair were welcomed home with a ticker tape parade in Invercargill, alongside fellow Southland Olympians Louise Ayling, Eddie Dawkins, Natalie Wiegersma and Natasha Hansen.

Four years later, Genevieve Behrent, who didn’t even take up rowing until after high school, won silver in Rio de Janeiro as part of the coxless pair with Rebecca Scown. The pair were also part of the women’s eight, the first New Zealand rowers to contest more than one event at an Olympic Games.

Incredibly, the same street in Invercargill would produce a second Games medal in Rio, with Wellesley Ave also the home of cyclist Eddie Dawkins. Dawkins, along with Sam Webster and Ethan Mitchell won silver in the men’s team sprint behind Great Britain.

With the Tokyo 2020 Games delayed by a year due to the Covid pandemic, Southland would have to wait five years to add a fifth medal to the trophy cabinet, with Alena Saili a member of the champion Black Ferns Sevens team.

Saili, who had to force her way into the team after suffering a fractured shoulder during a training session just two months before the Games, had been inspired by sitting in the gym at Southland Girls’ High School and watching the Black Ferns winning silver in Rio in 2016.