Woolhandlers take the spotlight at national lambshearing champs at the Raglan Rugby Grounds in Cross St on Saturday, January 7th for the Western Shears. More than 1000 lambs are being prepared for Saturday’s events, which starts off a busy post-Christmas competition season. Junior heats start at 8.30am , and the woolhandling heats start at 11am .
The pressure will be on New Zealand ’s top woolhandlers at the Western Shears’ national lambshearing championships in Raglan this Saturday as they resume a year-long competition to find two representatives for the World Championships in Masterton in March.
There has been no woolhandling competition at Raglan since 2009, but it returns for an important 8th round of the 12-round qualifying series which culminates with a top-six semi-final and final showdown at the Southern Shears in Gore on February 17-18.
Heading the series is two-times World champion Joanne Kumeroa, of Whanganui, followed by fellow World teams champions Keryn Herbert, of Te Awamutu, and 2008 individual champion Sheree Alabaster, of Taihape.
Reigning Golden Shears champion Kumeroa, now based mainly in Australia , won the World individual title in 2003 and 2005 and teams titles in 2005 and, with Alabaster, in 2008. Herbert won the teams title with Alabaster in 2010.
Currently also in the top six are Joel Henare, of Gisborne, and Bernadette Forde, of Tuatapere, and Tia Potae, of Milton, both aiming to be the first South Island-based woolhandlers to compete at the World Championships since 2005.
Having won the Raglan final in 2009, Herbert goes into Saturday’s event as reigning national champion, and also reigning national crossbred lambs champion after winning that title at Winton last January.
Napier shearer John Kirkpatrick will be the favourite to win the Open shearing title on Saturday as he prepares for the resumption of the shearing World Championships qualifying series in Southland later in the month.
Just back from a month’s shearing in Australia, he won the title last year and won four competitions in the pre-Christmas stage of the Shearing Sports New Zealand season, in which he is well-placed to head the national rankings for a sixth year in a row.
It was today not clear if 2010 champion and 2011 runner-up and Taranaki farmer Paul Avery will compete. Almost retired from competition shearing, he won at his only attempt this season in his home Stratford show in November but is currently in training for the Coast to Coast Classic longest-day event in February. He was third overall and winning veteran in the two-day classification last year.
The first event of the New Year in the South Island will be the Peninsula Duvauchelle Shears at the Duvauchelle Show on January 14. Shearing, which starts at 10am , will be in four classes from Open to Junior, as well as Veterans, and there will also be a Speedshear.