25 years on: Burdon's unexpected love of the Tour of Southland
“Cyclists are a different breed, and I mean that in a positive way."
The 68th Tour of Southland begins today, and for the 25th time Nathan Burdon will be there writing about it. Logan Savory chatted to Burdon about how he unexpectedly fell in love with New Zealand’s premier cycling race.
Nathan Burdon admits he wasn’t all that thrilled when he was told in 2000 that he’d be covering the Tour of Southland.
He was less than 12 months into his job working as reporter at The Southland Times. The first few months was as a general reporter before he joined the sports department.
The 2000 Tour of Southland was the then young scribe’s first major assignment as a sports journalist.
The problem is he knew little about cycling, and his interest levels for the sport was even less.
“I didn’t even know what the GC was - the General Classification. [Cycling] has got its own language, and I knew nothing,” Burdon says.
The first day or so following the 2000 Tour, and then writing about it each night, didn’t exactly win him over.
“I hated it,” he remembers thinking back to the first big stage up Bluff Hill that year.
There was a significant mishap when the second group of riders followed the wrong van and headed up Bluff Hill before the front group in the race.
A young Hayden Roulston won that stage before the protests started to roll in from other teams.
That night teams were threatening to pull out of the race prompting Burdon to get on the phone to long-time race director Bruce Ross and investigate what was going on.
“Then I wrote this big story about it. It was front page news,” Burdon recalls.
“Basically, I was saying the Tour is a shambles. I showed up to the race the next day and you’ve got all of these volunteers who have put their heart and soul into this race, and this whippersnapper has come along and written this story about what a disaster the whole thing is.
“I was about as popular as Covid, to be fair. I thought; ‘I’m over this, I’m going to get this week done and it will be the last race I cover’.”
Burdon was wrong.
Fast forward to 2024, and without giving away his age, Burdon has been covering the Tour of Southland for over half of his life.
It’s now his favourite week of the sporting calendar.
By the end of the week on his first tour, Burdon says his mindset had shifted. He had become hooked, as many people who spend a bit of time amongst the Tour of Southland bubble do.
He leant heavily on race commissaire Graham Sycamore during his first few years covering it. Burdon travelled with Sycamore in a car and soaked up his extensive cycling knowledge.
“There is nothing Graham doesn’t know about cycling. And it was such a great spot to watch the race from because any breaks that went up the road we went in behind those breaks.
“I just picked Graham’s brain, probably for the next four or five years. I learned so much about cycling just listening to him about what was going on.”
Burdon also had Barry Harcourt on hand to point him in the right direction.
Harcourt was a former Tour of Southland rider himself but went on to become New Zealand’s premier cycling photographer - if not the best sports photographer in the country after attending the Sydney Olympics in 2000.
Burdon and Harcourt’s daily quest was to get the Tour of Southland race on the front page of The Southland Times. More often than not they would achieve that through a stunning Harcourt photograph or an intriguing yarn from Burdon.
At that time, in the early 2000s, The Southland Times also entered a team in the Tour of Southland each year. Harcourt helped put the team together, which also had its advantages for a reporter on the hunt for a strong story angle.
“We got quite a few scoops because The Southland Times was a big sponsor of the race and had a really strong team. If they weren’t winning it, they were certainly right up there,” Burdon says.
“Riders would stay at Barry’s house so obviously he had an inside running as to who was feeling good and who didn’t like who in the peloton, because there was so much politics going on.”
In some part it was that drama, and the cycling characters involved in the Tour, that helped pique Burdon’s interest in the event, and the sport of cycling in general.
“Cyclists are a different breed, and I mean that in a positive way.
“You can cover a lot of rugby, and the guys can be a little bit guarded and probably a little bit afraid to speak their mind, but that is usually not the case with cyclists. They will give you a yarn,” Burdon says.
“They are massive characters. There’s Hayden Roulston. I was right there at the very tail end of Graeme Miller, Brian Fowler made a return while I was covering the race, Gordon McCauley was a massive personality in the race.”
When Burdon left his job as sports editor at The Southland Times in 2015, he thought his time covering the Tour of Southland was also probably done.
There was some sadness attached to that. Afterall, he had circled that week in November every year as something to look forward to.
Burdon shifted into a communications role with Sport Southland - now known as Active Southland.
As it turned out Sport Southland was helping the Tour of Southland in a communications capacity. Burdon quickly found himself back writing about the race without missing a single year.
It has extended his involvement to the 25-year mark.
“I’ve probably fluked it really, I’ve managed to go from one organisation to another that both have always had a strong role in the race.”
The media landscape has changed a lot over the past 25 years with fewer sports journalists across print, radio, and television now on hand to cover New Zealand’s premier cycling race.
As a result, Burdon’s current role has taken on an added importance, in terms of helping attract attention for such an important Southland event.
There’s a high chance if you read a race report during the 2024 Tour of Southland, wherever it might be, Burdon would have penned it. Many media outlets now pick up Burdon’s daily offerings.
The Tour has also embraced the online age through text commentary, social media, and video content helping get the race in front of people far and wide.
They pull together small team each year to make all of that happen.
“The exposure that this race gives Southland for a whole week, we are telling Southland stories and showing them Southland scenery, not just to New Zealanders but to the world.
“People are watching this race in Europe, Australia, America. In terms of an advertisement for this part of the world, I can’t think of another event that does the same thing.”
For a bloke that had initial hesitations about the Tour of Southland in 2000, Burdon is now one of its biggest fans. He does a good job putting a strong case together that others should also embrace it.
“I would challenge anybody to come out on the Tour for a day and not get absolutely hooked to it. When you get involved in it you are in this real bubble and nothing else seems to matter.
“People come along as a spectator and end up being a volunteer for the next decade without even thinking about it.”
As far as the 24 Tour of Southland races that Burdon has covered to date, he acknowledges it’s hard to go past 2022 as a standout.
It was the year that Josh Burnett broke a drought when he became the first Southlander since Doug Bath in 1994 to win the race.
“We had come close with Corbin Strong a couple of years before that, he was desperately close. There was one stage - I think it was Bluff Hill - we had Corbin’s mum Raewyn in the car with us for that stage and he went on and won that stage. That was great.
“But he just couldn’t get the job done that year, so to have a Southlander in Josh Burnett in 2022 was pretty cool and I don’t think anybody was happier than Doug Bath that the drought had been broken.”
There’s something remarkable in the current day that a seven-day bike race can be run around public roads - and some very busy public roads. The race ventures around the Devils Staircase and up the Remarkables.
The traffic management process itself is a trigger for a headache. Then comes the financial support required to put on such an event annually.
The fact New Zealand’s other major road race, the New Zealand Cycle Classic, has just come to halt after 36 years highlights how challenging it is.
That New Zealand Cycle Classic has been unable to attract enough sponsorship support, while the Tour of Southland continues to hold its own.
It includes the SBS Bank being on board as the naming right sponsor.
Burdon points to another jewel in the crown that helps ensure the Tour of Southland rolls around Southland’s roads year after year. The volunteers.
“The volunteer base for cycling and this race is next level. It’s the people that take a week out of their lives, annual leave or whatever, every year to pitch in.
“You’ve got people that take a week off to hold a flag on some corner in the middle of nowhere, with the hail coming in, and when the race goes past, they’ve got to have their back to the cyclists because they have got to keep an eye on the traffic. You can’t say enough about the volunteers.”
Those volunteers will be out and about again on the 2024 Tour of Southland over the next seven days, as will over 100 cyclists.
Many of those cyclists will have their sights on the tour leader’s orange jersey - Southland’s Josh Burnett included.
Burdon will again be on hand to capture the action in words.
Keep an eye on The Southland Tribune each day for Nathan Burdon’s coverage of the 2024 SBS Bank Tour of Southland.
Good read, thanks boys.
Great story :)