Paewai bounces back for record

Ringakaha Paewai on the way to his tally of 618 in Tuesday's five-stand record-breaker at Puketiti Station. Photo / Supplied

A Dannevirke shearer on Tuesday bounced back from the disappointment of an 11th-hour scrapping of a world record bid two years ago to star in the smashing of another record in the sweltering heat of a King Country woolshed.

Ringa Paewai shore the top individual score of 618, as a Pio Pio-based gang set a new eight-hour world five-stand strongwool lambshearing record of 2910.

Done in the Puketiti Station woolshed about 25 minutes west of the King Country township of Pio Pio, it smashed the previous record of 2638 set in December 2013 by a Waikaretu-based gang including Takapau shearer Richard Welch.

Two years ago, Paewai and fellow central and southern Hawke's Bay shearers Cam Ferguson and Adam Brausch were denied an attempt at a three-stand record when judges ruled just the night before it was to take place that the lambs for the event did not carry sufficient head wool.

There were no similar issues with yesterday's record, a pre-record shear of 20 lambs before the judges on Monday producing 20.8kg of wool, comfortably more than the average requirement of 0.9kg per lamb.

Paewai joins an illustrious group of Hawke's Bay shearers already in the World Sheep Shearing Records Society's record books. They are headed by Flaxmere's Dion King and South Island-based Porangahau shearer Rod Sutton, who hold the premier nine-hour strongwool records for lambs and ewes respectively.

Others are Hastings-based new world champion Rowland Smith and brother Doug, who hold a two-stand ewes record for eight hours set at Waitara Station, north of Te Pohue, Napier shearer John Kirkpatrick who headed a four-stand record in Southland February 2013, and Rowland Smith's wife, Ingrid, and her mother, Marg Baynes, who set a women's record in 2009.