New venues for Otago and Pahiatua shears

MEDIA RELEASE

On behalf of Shearing Sports New Zealand

February 10, 2015

New venues for Otago and Pahiatua shears’

Two of the major lead-up events before the Golden Shears are shifting out of town centre venues and returning to woolsheds for their competitions over the next three weeks.

They are the Otago Shears, which will be held next Friday andSaturday (February 13-14) at the Telford Farm, 498 The Owaka Highway, and the Pahiatua Shears, which will be held on March 1 at a Fouhy family property at 2021 Mangaone Valley Rd, southeast of Pahiatua.

First-day events at the Otago Shears start at 8am on Friday and include the woolhandling events, including the New Zealand Woolhandler of the Year, and junior and intermediate shearing heats.

Saturday’s events, starting at 7.30am with senior shearing heats, include the Open shearing championship, the first leg of an unofficial four-event shearing Grand Slam over four successive weekends, also including the Southern Shears in Gore, the Pahiatua Shears and the Golden Shears in Masterton on March 5-7.

Only multiple Golden Shears champions Roger Cox, David Fagan and John Kirkpatrick are thought to have won all four finals in the Grand Slam in a single season.

The Otago Shears had been held in the Balclutha Town Hall each year for more than half-a-century, while the Pahiatua Shears, first held on a trailer in the early 1970s, became particularly popular during the later 1970s and the 1980s in a woolshed at Balfour Stud, beside State Highway 2 just south of Pahiatua, and had been held at the town’s sports stadium for about the last 10 years.

The Otago Shears, which expect to be back in the Town Hall next year, will be signposted “Otago Shears” from Balclutha’s Z Energy service station, while similar signposting from Pahiatua’s BP station will direct competitors and spectators to the one-day, shearing-only Pahiatua Shears about 10km away.

ENDS

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