Popular win for guru East Coast woolhandler

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From Doug Laing, media officer, Shearing Sports New Zealand

February 23, 2014

Popular win for guru East Coast woolhandler

A guru East Coast woolhandler who has been off the winning scene for several years has scored a popular victory by toppling some of the modern day giants of the sport at Apiti in Northern Manawatu.

Regarded as a matriarch in the shearing industry, Ailsa Fleming, from Te Karaka, a former New Zealand representative who was bestowed Master Woolhandler status more than 10 years ago, won the Apiti Sports Open woolhandling final yesterday(Saturday).

She left in her wake such top competitors as World 2010 World teams champions Keryn Herbert and Sheree Alabaster(who also won the World individual title in 2008), and former Golden Shears champion Ronnie Goss.

Alabaster failed to make the final, in which Herbert was second. Marton’s Logan Kamura was third, and fourth was Goss, the Kimbolton veteran who had won the Taumarunui Jamboree Open woolhandling final on Friday.

The top woolhandlers head for the Pre-Shears Championships on Wednesday at Massey University’s Riverside Farm at Mikimiki, north of Masterton, featuring the final round in a year-long World Championships selection series, which ends with a trial over the next three days at the Golden Shears in Masterton, to find two representatives for the championships in Ireland in May. Other features in the woolhandling at the Golden Shears will be the Open final and a transtasman test match.

ENDS

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