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It's Samuels' night as the south gets first Golden Shears open title in 35 years
Southland shearer Leon Samuels became the first South Islander to win the Golden Shears Open shearing title in 35 years in a dramatic six-man final of 20 sheep each in Masterton tonight.
The winner of the New Zealand Shears Open final in Te Kuiti last April and thus a member of the New Zealand team at the World Championships in Scotland two months later, Samuels was second in the race – the only shearer to get within a sheep of miracle-man and Wairarapa shearer David Buick, who shore the final in 16m 16.064s, one of the quicker times in the 62 years of the event.
It was just two-and-a-half years after Buick was so badly injured in an accident on his Pongaroa farm the prognosis was that he might not even walk again.
Ultimately it was a Southland one-two, with 40-year-old Samuels, originally from Mangakino in the Central North Island but based in Southland or Australia for many years, and with only one previous Golden Shears Open final beforehand (third in 2020), winning by 1,253pts from runner-up and Riverton shearer Casey Bailey, in the final for the first time.
Losing some points in judging of the sheep in the pens, Buick was a further 1.26pts back in third place, followed in order by Southland veteran Nathan Stratford, in his 12th Golden Shears Open final, first-time championship finalist James Ruki, of Te Kuiti, and 2015 winner and Hawke's Bay-based Scotland international Gavin Mutch.
The last South Island shearer to win the Open was Edsel Forde in 1989, and it was Forde who was also last from the South Island to win the New Zealand Shears Open (in 1993) until Samuels won it 11 months ago.
Among those in the crowd of about 1000 was Alexandra great Brian 'Snow" Quinn, who won the Golden Shears Open title six times between 1965 and 1972.
The drama started before the shears started, with eight-times winner Rowland Smith out with injury, and Northland gun and prolific winner Toa Henderson was then eliminated in the quarterfinals.
The pair and Samuels were quoted from the outset by the TAB as the most likely to win, Samuels making it a fifth win for the season.
Stratford won a third PGG Wrightson National Shearing Circuit final, with just a 0.355pts margin to Samuels in second place, in another Southland quinella.
It was Stratford's 20th National circuit final, and on the night he also shore his 18th transtasman test, a New Zealand team record celebrated by teaming with Samuels and Marlborough shearer Angus Moore in an all-South Island win over Australians Daniel McIntyre, Nathan Meaney and Josh Bone.
But there were just 2.51pts in the test-match result, the closest margin in transtasman shearing tests since an Australian victory in Warrnambool, Vic, in 2013, and New Zealand's narrowest win since 2009.
The first test in the annual home-and-away series was in Euroa, Vic, in October 1974, and there have now been 71 tests, Australia winning 38 and New Zealand 33, there having been no tests from 1984 to 1997.
It was Stratford's last test, so for Samuels a proud moment to celebrate the win with his mentor.
Joel Henare, 32, from Gisborne and stepping back from some competition this season to focus on his children in Motueka, won the Golden Shears Open woolhandling title for a 10th time in a row, but with a narrow margin of just six points from Alexandra hopeful Pagan Rimene.
The North Island Open woolhandling circuit final, carrying a place in the 2024-2025 New Zealand transtasman series team, was won by Keryn Herbert, of Te Kuiti.
But, having represented Cook Islands at the 2023 World Championships in Scotland, the team position went to runner-up Ngaio Hanson, of Eketahuna, who despite also having represented New Zealand at the World Championships in Scotland is yet to win an Open woolhandling final.
The second woolhandling member of the transtasman team next season will come from the New Zealand Merino Shears final in Alexandra in October this year.
A double for Taumarunui couple
Taumarunui partners Forde Alexander and Vinniye Phillips, who have a young son and daughter, won the Golden Shears senior finals.
Alexander was second-off in the shearing final of 12 sheep each, six seconds behind leading Southland hope Nathan Bee's 12m 30.431s, but had the best quality both on the board and in the pens to win by more than two points from eventual runner-up Gabriel Winders, of Invercargill.
Bee had to settle for third place, but with just 0.003 points separating the pair in the race for the minor money.
The couple had been consistent placegetters as they travelled the shows together, each managing two wins earlier in the season, Alexander at the Hawke's Bay show's Great Raihania Shears in October and a fortnight later at the Manawatu show, but Phillips didn't win until claiming the Taumarunui and Apiti shears' titles the previous Friday and Saturday.
They will both be trying to make it a double-double at the New Zealand Shears in Te Kuiti next month, their last show before graduating to Open-class next year, Phillips joining sister and 2020 Golden Shears Junior woolhandling champion Te Anna Phillips.
It was close – but there was still a winner
The Intermediate shearing final, over eight sheep each, was always shaping as a close and open affair, and ended with just 0.98 points between first and fourth, the victory going to 27-year-old Feilding shearer Tini Papanui.
Gisborne farmer and shearer Dylan Young won the race in 10m 0.938s, more than a minute quicker than 27-year-old Papanui, the next man off.
Papanui was also just third-best on quality points, but had the best combination to beat eventual runner-up Young by 0.545pts.
The winner had been just starting to emerge in competition shearing at the time of the 2023 Golden Shears, when he was fifth in the Intermediate final, and this season had had just one win, at the Central Hawke's Bay A and P Show in November.
Junior shearer learned from the Master
Napier shearer Kaivah Cooper's decision to drop out of school four years ago at age 16 might have seemed not the best of life-choices, but he wasn't going anywhere, other than to the top.
After four years of tertiary education in the woolshed, mentored by 2017 World champion and four-times Golden Shears Open champion John Kirkpatrick, he claimed the ultimate reward – a Golden Shears Junior shearing title.
Cooper had been in near unbeatable form and won at Taumarunui, Apiti and Pahiatua on successive days in the last weekend before the shears.
A former Napier Boys' High School pupil, Cooper sheared his five sheep in 7m 37.755s to be first off the board and won the title by 1.663pts from runner-up and Hunterville shearer Orlando Ratima. The first five were North Island shearers, all beating top South Island contender Jet Schimanski, of Gore.
The Junior woolhandling title was won by Lucy Elers, from Mataura and who had already won three major titles in the South Island this year, at Lumsden (longwool), Winton (lambs) and Gore (second-shear).
Earlier in the championships Ashlin Swann, of Wairoa, won the Novice shearing final, and Keisha Reiri, from Masterton but based in Piopio, won the Novice woolhandling title.
Laura Bradley, of Papatawa, near Woodville, was a surprise elimination from the Senior shearing, in the heats, but bounced back to win the Women's shearing event, becoming the first to hold the New Zealand Shears and Golden Shears women's titles simultaneously.
A southerly blowing at the Golden Shears
A wind of Golden Shears change may have blown in from the south with a Southland team winning the annual championships’ first Regional Team Shearing Challenge in Masterton tonight (Friday).
In a South Island one-two finish, the team of Open shearer Brett Roberts, of Mataura, and Senior up-and-comer Nathan Bee, of Wyndham, beat North Canterbury combination Hugh De Lacy and Blake Crooks by 0.706pts, with third-place going to the Gisborne shearers Tama Niania and Te Ua Wilcox.
The win came after a startling effort by fellow Southland shearer Nathan Stratford, of Invercargill, to become top qualifier for the 12-man glamour event Open shearing championship semi-finals, to be shorn late on Saturday afternoon.
Best known for quality shearing overcoming time deficits against the faster shearers throughout an Open-class career of 27 seasons, Stratford was the second fastest of the 12 qualifiers to graduate from the eight-sheep-each Top 30 shootout tonight.
But out of the race is TAB favourite and Northland shearer Toa Henderson, of Kaiwaka who finished ranked No 15, about threequarters of a point from qualifying.
With both original favourite Rowland Smith (injured) and Henderson out, the TAB immediately elevated Stratford to joint-favourite with fellow Southland shearer Leon Samuels.
Winner of six events in the South Island this season, Stratford is aiming to qualify for the Saturday night Open final for a 12th time, and the title for a first time. He was runner-up in 2019 and 2020 and third last year.
Meanwhile New Zealand team of Cushla Abraham, of Masterton, and Tia Potae, from Kennedy Bay, restored a little Kiwi transtasman pride, after the Black Caps’ Friday difficulties on the cricket pitch by beating a new Australian team of Marlene Whittle and Alexander Schoff in the New Zealand leg of an annual home-and-away woolhandling series.
The Kiwi win came after three consecutive victories by away teams, including a win Abraham and Potae in Bendigo, Vic, in October. New Zealand has now won 36 of the 47 transtasman woolhandling tests since 1998.
Meanwhile, Laura Bradley, of Papatawa, near Woodville, added the Golden Shears Women’s title to the New Zealand Shears Women’s title she won in Te Kuiti last April, some compensation for an early elimination from the senior shearing championship, in which she had been considered a strong candidate to be the first woman to win the Senior title.
Test team woolhandler Cushla Abraham won her second Golden Shears women’s woolpressing title, and in the latest chapter of a Masterton siblings rivalry Vinnie Goodger regained the men’s woolpressing title by beating brother, defending champion and 16-times winner Jeremy Goodger.
Six of the best - Gordon whanau reunion in one Golden Shears heat
A unique moment in the 62 years of the Golden Shears happened today when six members of one family filled the six-stand board in a heat of glamour event the Open championship.
Wools of New Zealand New Zealand 2023 UK tour team member Paerata Abraham, who with wife Cushla (nee Gordon, a New Zealand transtasman series woolhandling team member) by coincidence was on the No 1 stand, historically known as the “ringer’s” stand. The couple run Masterton firm Abraham Shearing, which they established about eight years ago.
On stands No 2-4 were Abraham’s brothers-in-law Joseph Gordon (who had his first Open-class win in November), Adam Gordon (the No 1-ranker Senior shearer nationwide last season), and David Gordon Abraham’s UK tour teammate), and on stands 5-6 the Gordons’ father, Nuki (who has shorn at Golden Shears annually for more than 30 years), and Kyle Mita (partner of Samantha Gordon, another sibling and also an Open-class woolhandling winner).
It was David, who was Golden Shears Novice champion as a 13-year-old in 2010, that was first to finish the heat of six second shear sheep each.
It was David Gordon who won the race, taking 6m 43.012, and sitting in sixth place with10 heats and 60 shearers having shorn, but Paerata Abraham had the better combination of time an d quality points and was provisionally ranked No 4.
The possibility of the six being in the same heat started when they paid the money to enter – the first entries receive being in the latest heats, the last in the first.
The family-gang shearers were all entered at the same time, and Nuki Gordon said that when the possibility of all being in the same heat emerged they were worried one or two might drop off into the heat beforehand or that immediately afterwards.
“I don’t do much shearing (any more),” said the 60-year-old family senior. “But I always wanted to shear with them. It was great.”
At the end of the 14 heats, Paerata Abraham (fourth), David Gordon (11th) and Adam Gordon (15th) had all made it through to the Friday-night Top 30 quarterfinal shootout, headed by Favourite Toa Henderson, of Kaiwaka, in Northland
Of the 79 in the heats Nuki Gordon was placed No 79, but he was prepared for it.
“I won’t be shearing tonight,” he said minutes after completing his six sheep, in 7m 41.90sec.
The Gordon’s
Abraham Shearing's Gordon family gathering filling all six stand in one heat of the Golden Shears Open shearing championship in Masterton. Photo / Pete Nikolaison
Wairoa schoolgirl wins as youth dominates first day of Golden Shears
A 15-year-old Wairoa College student claimed first bragging rights for the growing number of female shearers at the Golden Shears by winning the Novice final yesterday.
Ashlin Swann, in Masterton with twin sister and fellow Novice shearer Shawna, brother and 2020 Novice winner Ryka, and father, wool-presser and open-class shearer Paul Swann – leaving mum Sonya at home to run the Ardkeen farm - was one of five Hawke’s Bay-based competitors who made the final six.
Having been fourth of the 61 in the heats and third qualifier from the semi-finals, she was slowest in the final, shearing the two sheep in 7m 27.019s – two minutes slower that the first to finish, 18-year-old Ryan Craw, from Coromandel but currently in his first year in cadet farm training at Pukemiro, near Dannevirke.
Uncharacteristically Swann was also only fourth-best in judging on the shearing board.
But she slayed the opposition with a near sheen-clean result with the finished product, incurring just three penalties in judging in the pens, and won by over five points overall from eventual runner-up Karl Schoff, of Chinchilla, Queensland.
There was a big Hawke’s Bay influence all round in the final, with third-placed Craw and fifth placed Grady Collis, from Tauhoa, in Northland, having earlier won the MKM Students Challenge for Pukemiro, and fourth and sixth placed Rebecca Dickson and Bugs Butler having been the Tikokino-based Smedley team that was second.
Swann, who first shore a full sheep in the Hawke’s Bay Show schools competition in October 2022, had become a regular in recent competitions in the lower and central North Island, and had won at Taihape, Marton, Aria and Te Puke since late January.
She said she go up to Junior class at her next competition, probably the New Zealand Shears in Te Kuiti next month.
But despite the increasing experience, she said she was “nervous” when she got up onto the Masterton War Memorial Stadium stage.
“I was shaking as soon as I got up there,” she said. “I was very scared. I was shaking.”
She takes every chance to shear when her dad needs sheep shorn on the farm, and obligingly lets her go to it while he “gets on the broom,” and every chance to compete, as long as her dad is taking her.
The Paewai Mullins Novice Woolhandling final was won 19-year-old Keisha Reiri, orgibnally from Masterton but now working for Piopio contractor Mark Barrowcliffe, with mum Azuredee Paku, who won the New Zealand Shears Senior woolhandling title in Te Kuiti in 2021.
In a small number of competitions in the last two seasons, Reiri won the North Island championships Novice final at the Rangitikei Shearing Sports in Marton last year.
Yesterday judges awarded her the best fleece points, a telling advantage in a 7pts win over runner-up Gemma Buick, of Pongaroa, who had best points on the board and oddments, and equal-best time points.
The first night of the shears was the domain of the speedsters, and the top three speedshear competitors making it to the final of the Open Speedshear. It was won by Masterton shearer Paerata Abraham, with a quickest time of 17.789 seconds in the three-man showdown, with Jimmy Samuels, of Marton, the runner-up, and Jack Fagan, of Te Kuiti, placed third. Forde Alexander, of Taumarunui, won the Senior Speedshear, with a quickest time of 18.646sec, with Southland shearer Nathan Bee placed second, and King Country shearer Taelor Tarrant third.
Hawke's Bay farming cadet unit does it again at Golden Shears
The growing reputation of Southern Hawke’s Bay farm cadet training scheme Pukemiro got another boost with a win in the MKM Originals Student Shearing challenge on the opening day of the 62nd Golden Shears in Masterton today.
The event attracted six two-member teams, and with each shearing a single sheep, relay-fashion, 18-year-old Pukemiro shearers Ryan Craw, from Coromandel, and Grady Collis, from Tauhoa, in Northland scored by more than five points from defending champion Central Hawke’s Bay institution Smedley, represented by Bugs Butler and Rebecca Dickson.
It was the first of about 25 titles to be decided in the three-day Golden Shears.
The event was first held in 2018 and won by Waipaoa, from north of Gisborne, but Pukemiro has three of the other four – in 2019, 2020 and now this year, and there was no Golden Shears in 2021 or 2022.
Both Craw and Collis have shorn in other Novice competitions amid a new wave of youthful enthusiasm which attracted 190 competitors in Novice and Junior shearing and woolhandling events – about 40 per cent of all the competitors at the championships.
The Paewai Mullins Novice Woolhandling final was won 19-year-old Keisha Reiri, orgibnally from Masterton but now working for Piopio contractor Mark Barrowcliffe, with mum Azuredee Paku, who won the New Zealand Shears Senior woolhandling title in Te Kuiti in 2021.
In a small number of competitions in the last two seasons, Reiri won the North Island championships Novice final at the Rangitikei Shearing Sports in Marton last year.
Judges awarded her the best fleece points, as telling advantage in a 7pts win over runner-up Gemma Buick, of Pongaroa, who had best points on the board and oddments, and equal-best time points.
The Novice Shearing was still to be decided late afternoon, and the Open and Senior Speedshear events were taking place in the evening.
Winning woolhandling: It's more about class, pride and passion
Perennial Golden Shears Open woolhandling champion Joel Henare is back in Masterton aiming for a 10th consecutive win in the event.
But it’s not so much about winning as working, in the pride and knowledge that woolhandling is a valued part of the New Zealand economy just waiting to be even more valuable – when the prices for the stock New Zealand strong wool start getting back to where they should be.
With about 100 woolhandlers lining-up for the Wairarapa Pre-Shears Woolhandling championships north of Masterton on Wednesday, followed by the three-day Golden Shears whch started today in Masterton War Memorial Stadium, Henare spoke of the passion woolhandlers have in the industry and the sport developed to help enhance the skills needed in the workplace.
“Contributing to the national economy by ensuring the fleece quality,” he said. “That’s what woolhandling competitions are designed to do.”
“That’s where we can find out, actually, who is doing it properly and ensuring that the farmer gets the best return for his wool that’s available,” he said.
“As anyone misses the oddments or anything that’s not fleece, that will discount the price, causing the farmer to lose-out on money,” he said. “But also it’s the integrity. When the wool presser, the wool classer or whoever writes on the bale that it’s fleece wool, then that’s what the wool buyer thinks that he is buying.”
“If there’s anything in there that’s not of fleece wool then he feels a bit cheated,” he said. “It’s the integrity of one’s word: What they deem to be good fleece wool and what they deem to be oddments or inferior wool type. That’s what will determine Saturday night’s winner, pretty much.”
Dannevirke woolhandler-turned-businesswoman Mavis Mullins, who was among those at the forefront of woolhandling competition around its introduction to the previously shearing-only Golden Shears in 1985, says that previously many thought woolhandlers were “just there to clear the wool out of the way for the shearers.”
But there had been a long history of certificated wool classing, and the advent of competitions and then World championships put into the spotlight the passion and pride that keeps the skills alive for “when the day comes – when the wool prices get back to where they should be.”
She is living testimony of the person development, winning the Golden Shears Open woolhandling title in 1987 and 1993 and being with late husband Koro a shearing contractor on the way to becoming a Massey University graduate with a Masters in business administration, the first and still-only female New Zealand World shearing and woolhandling championships team manager, the first female president of the Golden Shears International Shearing Championships Society, the first female board member and president of the Hawke’s Bay Rugby Union, and an inductee of the New Zealand Business Hall of Fame.
Now heading-up live-streaming commentary at the Golden Shears, with son Tuma heading-up the arena commentating and presentation – both in the footsteps of their late husband and father – Mavis Mullins says the passion of participation and the support for each other is much a part of the Golden Shears and other competitions throughout New Zealand.
Woolhandling is being contested this season at a record 27 of the 59 shearing sports competitions throughout the country.
From Gisborne but having grown-up in the woolsheds of Central Otago, 32-year-old Henare has amassed 137 wins since he first appeared in Open-class at the age of 14, including two individual World titles, and will start favourite to win the Golden Shears Open woolhandling title again, despite now limiting the appearances as he focuses more on his children from his base in Motueka.
This season he won four finals up to mid-January, but did not compete last weekend as the build-up started at Taumarunui and Apiti.
Leading the chase are former World teams title winners Keryn Herbert, of Te Kuiti, and Pagan Rimene, of Alexandra, and Logan Kamura, of Marton.
Herbert has also won four finals this year, including Taihape, Dannevirke and Apiti in the last month, but is yet to win the big one, having reached the final top four in Masterton seven times and been runner-up to Henare twice.
Rimene, whose mother won the title three times, has returned from a stint in Australia and won three major South Island events since mid-January, has been in the Golden Shears final three times, also with a best of twice placed second to Henare.
Kamura has made a late run with three wins in the last fortnight, at Ohura on February 17, Taumarunui last Friday, and at the Wairarapa Pre-Shears championships on Wednesday (re reults below).
At both the Pre-Shears Woolhandling Championships, the only wool-handling only on the Shearing Sports New Zealand calendar oif 59 shows throughout the country, and at the Golden Shears, there is also keen competition in the Senior, Junior and Novice grades, as the best from the south challenge the best from the north.
In Masterton there is also a transtasman woolhandling test match, the latest in a series which started in 1998. New Zealand is represented by Cushla Abraham, of Mastertonn, and Tia Potae, from Kennedy Bay, but based mainly over the years in Otago. Each is also an Open title hope, with one win each already in 2023-2024.
The Pre-Shears Championships at Massey University’s Riverside Farm, north of Masterton, included the North Island Woolhandling Circuit senior and Junior finals.
Injury forces shearing champion Rowland Smith out of Golden Shears
Reigning Golden Shears open shearing champion Rowland Smith has withdrawn from this year’s event because of injury.
Announcing the decision he said he had been preparing to defend the title, so it was disappointing to have to miss the competition in Masterton.
The near two-metres-tall 37-year-old and eight-times Golden Shears Open winner, and 2014 World Champion, announced the decision on Wednesday, just hours after he had received the latest news on an injury he has been trying to work through.
Meanwhile, fellow Hawke's Bay shearer John Kirkpatrick, who in 2002 ended the 12-years winning run of shearing legend David Fagan and went-on to win agai in 2008, 2011, and 2012, is also not expected to start, having had two operations during the summer and also not shorn ay comnpetitions during the season.
Smith said the diagnosis he received showed his injury to be worse than previously thought and he realised immediately it was best not to risk further damage with farming, rural contracting and family interests at play, and the desire to bounce back next season bidding for a place in the New Zealand team in the 2026 World Championships, also in Masterton.
He said he had been working towards defending the title, so it was a disappointment to have to withdraw at almost the last minute, with the three-day shears starting on Thursday morning and the Open championship heats being held on Friday afternoon.
The announcement sent the TAB into a spin, being the only betting agency in the World taking wagers on shearing competition in the only country where shearing competition is recognised by a Government or a government agency as sport.
Smith, who had competed just three times this season, for a win at Dannevirke on February 2, and third and second placings at Gore and Pukekohe on February 17 and 18 respectively, had been the TAB favourite, starting at $1.70 when the book opened on Monday, with second favourite and Northland shearer Toa Henderson at $2.60, after a string of dominant recent wins.
As punter interest swung towards Henderson he came into $2.25 and Smith drifted to $1.80, but with Smith scratching Henderson was installed a warm favourite at $1.45. The price on Southland gun and 2023 New Zealand Shears Open winner and World Championships team member Leon Samuels was chopped into $2.90.
Smith was runner-up first-time into the Golden Shears final in 2011 and third 12 months later, but hasn’t since been beaten in the six-man showdown. He didn’t compete in 2015, when it was won by New Zealand-based Scotland international Gavin Mutch, who is now the third favourite to win the final on Saturday night.
Champion Hawke's Bay shearer Rowland Smith after winning the Golden Shears Open title last year, for an eighth time. Injury has forced him out of a defence in the 2024 championships starting tomorrow (Thursday) and ending on Saturday. Photo / Pete Nikolaison.
Entries set to top 500 at 62nd Golden Shears
The 62nd Golden Shears International Shearing and Woolhandling Championships have started in Masterton today (Thursday) with biggest number of competitors in many years.
By the time the championships end on Saturday night, about 500 shearers, woolhandlers and woolpressers will have taken part - more than 25 per cent up on last year, when the”Goldies” returned after two years of cancellations in the Covid era.
The five shearing grades and four woolhandling grades, from Novice to Open, have a combined capacity entry of 508 and office manager Deb Keats said almost all spots were filled before the shears started, and the last of the late entries were being queued in case there were any withdrawals.
Some have entered both shearing and woolhandling, but with the addition of some woolpressing competitors who are not in shearing or woolhandling events the number of individual competitors is expected to round-off at about 500.
It’s almost twice as many as the biggest entry at any of the 45 competitions so far on the 2023-2024 Shearing Sports New Zealand calendar, and compares with a total of 388 shearing and woolhandling at last year’s Golden Shears.
New Golden Shears International Shearing Championships Society president Trish Stevens said: “We’re absolutely overwhelmed. We are particularly pleased with the numbers of Novice and Junior entries.”
The Novice shearing (66 entries), Junior shearing (72), and Novice woolhandling (24) have all reached capacity.
Late on Wednesday afternoon, when the Wairarapa Pre-Shears woolhandling championships were still in progress in a woolshed north of Masterton, there was still a small numbers of places available in the Golden Shears Junior woolhandling, which had a capacity of 48 to start in heats today in Masterton’s War Memorial Stadium, where the Golden Shears have been held annually since the inception in 1961, except in the cancellations of 2021 and 2022.
Shearing Sports New Zealand chairman and shearing legend Sir David Fagan, who in a 33-seasons open-class career netted more than 640 titles worldwide, including a record 16 in the Golden Shears Open championships, said he was so excited by the numbers “it makes me feel like entering again.”
He said that while sheep numbers have dipped below 26 million (focused on breeding ewes), there is still plenty of shearing in the workplace, with the combination of main shear, second shear and lambs expanding the numbers shorn to over 50 million.
Factors in the increase include greater numbers of competitors from overseas working in New Zealand this summer – including a group from Mongolia and an another group partnering an exchange group of young shearers with New Zealand trainer Elite Wool Industry Training and Australia trainers. There are also competitors from Scotland, England, Ireland, Northern Ireland, Wales, France and Germany.
Among other factors are the rebound from Covid era and its border closures and the profile shearing opportunities have been given with a sequence of shearing tally records during the summer, in particular the setting of new women’s marks for eight and nine-hour records on both ewes and lambs.
Competition starts at 7.45am on Thursday, with about events to be decided by the time glamour event the 20-sheep Golden Shears Open Shearing Championship final – the “Wimbledon” of shearing – is completed on Saturday night. Teams event include a schools shearing match (the first to be decided), transtasman test matches in woolhandling and shearing, and a new regional teams contest.
Entrants line up for Novice heats on the opening morning of the 2024 Golden Shears in Masterton. Photo / Pete Nikolaison, Golden Shears Media Group.