Kirkpatrick Adds National Champs to Golden Shears, Again

Napier shearer John Kirkpatrick may have missed his dream of winning the World championship but he did the next best thing tonight when he added the New Zealand Open title to the Golden Shears title he won in Masterton four weeks ago.

It was the 11th win of the season for the 41-year-old grandfather, enabling to win the Bowen Trophy as the top-ranked shearer in New Zealand for a sixth consecutive year.

Tonight he headed home an all-Hawke’s Bay trifecta, beating Hastings-based Northland shearer and defending champion Rowland Smith by 0.771pts, with just one one-thousandth of a point back to third placegetter Dion King, also of Hastings .

But the race between Kirkpatrick and King was the feature, just two seconds separating the pair with Kirkpatrick first to the button finishing 20 sheep in 14min 56.05sec, while early pacemaker Smith was third off in just over 15min 18sec.

Veteran home town hero David Fagan, winner of the event 18 times from 1986 to 2010, was fourth.

It was Kirkpatrick’s third win in the event, to go with four Golden Shears Opens. It was the second time he’d won both events in the same year.

It was a big night for Southland shearer Nathan Stratford who won the New Zealand Shears Circuit, and a place with Kirkpatrick in the New Zeakland team to tour the U.K. in June and July, the first shearer from the South Island to make the team in 11 years.

King won the third Open-class shearing title of the championships, the North Island Shearer of the Year final, on Friday.

Former Wolrld woolhandling champion Sheree Alabaster successfully defended the New Zealand Open woolhandling title, her sixth win in the event. It was a close finish in which she beat runner-up Veronica (Ronnie) Goss, of Kimbolton, by five points, with less than two more points to Gisborne’s Joel Henare, who won the World title in Masterton on March 3.

Waipukurau shearer and young father-of-three Tysson Hema also completed a Golden Shears-New Zealand Championships double in the Senior shearing, as did Kaeo’s Bryce Guy in the Intermediate class. Guy’s brother, Charlie won the Junior title, and the Novice title was won by Tegwyn Bradley, of Woodville.

The Senior woolhandling final was won by Kim Sowry, of Eketahuna, and the Junior woolhandling title by Stevie Mason-Smallman, of Taihape.

ENDS

© Scoop Media