Shearer sets sights on new world record mark

RECORD TARGET: Hastings-based shearer Brya Harrison plans to set a new women's world record for shearing the most ewes in a nine-hour day. PHOTO/DOUG LAING

A farmers' daughter who abandoned university and learned to shear because her injured father couldn't shear a few fly-blown sheep, will tackle one of shearing's toughest records on a Hawke's Bay sheep station.
Brya Harrison, 28, daughter of Northland farmers Sno and Robyn Harrison but shearing in Hawke's Bay, confirmed her plans at the Great Raihania Shears in Hastings on Friday.
She will aim to shear more than 400 ewes in nine hours at Waitara Station, north of Te Pohue, a walloping 74 more sheep than her best tally - 326 in 10-and-a-half hours in the UK.
The bid is set to take place on January 24, two days after Australia-based Te Kuiti shearer Stacey Te Huia tackles the men's record in the same woolshed.
The World Shearing Records Society has no women's record for the 9hr ewes category in its register, although a tally of 522 was shorn by Maureen Hyatt in Southland in 1982, before the current rules were established.
The men's record, regarded as the supreme challenge of World Record shearing, is 721, set by Porangahau shearer Rodney Sutton in 2007.
Harrison did not compete at Friday's shears at the Hawke's Bay Show, spending some of her time looking for potential helpers and advisers, including those who have already set shearing records.
The up-and-down nature of the current shearing season, in which she's working for Flaxmere contractor Colin Watson Paul, may not be the best start, but she's not letting it put her off.
"I've already started boot-camp," she said, highlighting the training and fitness work necessary to transform shed shearers into record breakers.
Sutton was into triathlons and ironman events and cycled hundreds of kilometres in the buildup to his attempt on the record seven years ago.
Te Huia is renowned for his fitness work outside of the daily grind of the woolshed, including gym work, swimming and some of the most disciplined preparation known to the shearing fraternity.
Harrison took-up shearing just three-and-a-half years ago, because her father had been injured in a logging accident and there was no one else to shear the small number of flyblown sheep.
"He was getting out of sheep," she said. "We had about 50 and they really needed to be done."
She shore the affected "patches", and decided, having given up studying at Massey's Albany campus because it "just wasn't me," she may as well learn to shear.
"I did six sheep learning off Dad, and loved it," she said. "Someone told me you do it once, and you get the bug. I thought, Yeah, I can travel the world."
She's already shorn more in a day than her dad did in a day, and she also turned her hand to shearing sport, spurred by the competitiveness and determination to win she developed as a runner.
There won't be any rest after the big day, with four weeks left to prepare for another big day - her wedding with fiance and Napier shearer and farmer's son Chris Kyle, at her family's farm at Okaihau, north of Kaikohe.