Shearers in 8-hour challenge

Ringa Paewai, from Dannevirke, will attempt to set a lambshearing record next month. Photo / File

A lambshearing record which was set just a year ago will be challenged by a five-man gang in a remote woolshed southwest of Te Kuiti next month.

The attack on the five-stand record of 2638 strongwool lambs in eight hours will be made on January 6 at Ingleby Corporation's Puketiti Station, between Pio Pio and the coastline of the North Taranaki Bight.

The shearers are George Parker, from Kingston, South Australia, Aidan Copp, from West Melton, near Christchurch, Willie Hewitson, from Woodlands in Southland, Ringa Paewai, from Dannevirke, and the one local, Josh MacDonald, son of former record-breaker and 1994 World champion Alan MacDonald, who manages Landcorp block Te Wharua Station, between Pio Pio and Taumarunui.

One original hopeful, Peter-Lee Ratima, withdrew after suffering a serious neck injury at rugby during the winter, but he is back shearing and is running the crew's gym training, said record manager, Pio Pio contractor and New Zealand Shearing Contractors Association vice-president Mark Barrowcliffe.

Shearing four two-hour runs, with half-hour breaks for smoko and an hour for lunch, the shearers will target a record set by brothers Sam and Richard Welch, former national circuit champion Angus Moore, and Coel L'Huillier and Peter Totorewa, at Cashmore Farms near Kawakawa Bay, east of Auckland, on December 10, 2013.

The individual tallies ranged from Moore's 607 to Totorewa's 449, and Barrowcliffe says his team, working together since the start of December, have each done more than the average 528 which will need to be achieved under the watchful eyes of a team of qualified World Sheep Shearing Records Society judges, including at least one from Australia.

None of the hopefuls has previously shorn a record attempt, although Paewai was one of three whose three-stand record attempt in January 2013 was called-off when judges ruled just the night beforehand that the lambs for the event did not meet head-wool requirements..

The shearers have, however, had some success as competition shearers, Paewai having won the Golden Shears junior and intermediate finals, in 2002 and 2003 respectively and Hewitson the Royal Welsh Show senior final in the UK in 2010.

The record bid, which will cost about $10,000, including fees to the society and feeding shearers, shed crews and judges, is one of five understood to be in the planning over the next three months, including Australia-based Te Kuiti shearer Stacey Te Huia's ultimate challenge " the nine-hour strongwool ewes record of 721, expected to take place at Waitara Station, between Napier and Taupo, on January 22.