Fagan Hammers The Welsh

Fagan Hammers The Welsh

Kiwi shearing legend David Fagan unleashed one of his best performances in more than 20 seasons of shearing in Wales when he hammered the locals to win again today on the road to next week’s World Championships at the Royal Welsh Show.

Fagan won the Cothi Open final, in which he and New Zealand teammate Cam Ferguson were pitted against four Welshmen, including World title hopefuls Gareth Daniels and Gareth Evans.

Just three months short of his 49th birthday and making it win number 601 in an open-class career stretching back to October 1982, Fagan still posted a record time for the event – 20 welsh mule lambs in 11 minutes 56 seconds.

The first to congratulate him afterwards was Welsh judge Lewis Jones who said: “You were faster than last time I judged you…and that was eight years ago. Unbelievable.”

“To stand their and judge David Fagan,” he said, “was an honour.”

It echoed the sentiments of the crowd, which included not only the Welsh who have idolised Fagan as they may once have idolised the shearer’s fellow Te Kuiti hero, Colin Meads, but also a smattering of other World Championships entrants.

Evans was second and Daniels third, both with superior quality to Ferguson who, while second off the board in 12m 2s, had to settle for fourth in the final count.

The Kiwis then hit the Welsh again to score a narrow win in the first of four tests to be shorn within nine days, including one at the end of the Royal Welsh Show, during which the 14th Golden Shears World Championships will take place on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Fagan’s win made it two-in-a-row, having won at the Great Yorkshire Show on Wednesday. Coincidentally, a horse named after him and in which he now has a 10 percent interest had its first North Island win at about the same time, at the Cambridge Trots.

Fagan has cemented favouritism to win the World title for a sixth time. But he hasn’t won the title in Wales, where he was beaten in the 1994 final by Alan McDonald, with whom he grew-up in the King Country farming locality of Pio Pio.

McDonald, 10 days older than Fagan and managing a Landcorp farm north of Taumarunui as well as owning a block near Pio Pio, is also in Wales to support his mate, and shore in a Welsh competition today for the first time in 11 years.

He reckoned he’d enjoy keeping some of the locals out of the money if he could, and had a chance when he was fifth qualifier in the heats. But he was eliminated in the semi-final.

ENDS

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