The crowd packed into a large marquee at the 2019 Golden Shears World Shearing and Woolhandling Championships in Le Dorat, France. The 2023 championships are in Scotland from Thursday to Sunday this week. Photo / SSNZ
The crowd packed into a large marquee at the 2019 Golden Shears World Shearing and Woolhandling Championships in Le Dorat, France. The 2023 championships are in Scotland from Thursday to Sunday this week. Photo / SSNZ
The 2023 Golden Shears World Shearing and Woolhandling Championships in Scotland this week seem certain to reignite a regular debate about whether shearing and woolhandling competition should be an Olympic Games sport.
“It would be difficult but not impossible,” Wools of New Zealand Shearing Sports New Zealand team manager and New Zealand Golden-Shears vice-president Ronny King said.
Olympic events are held at different venues and cities in the host country, for example, the 2032 Brisbane Olympics, which has venues south on the Gold Coast and north on the Sunshine Coast.
This set-up could work in the sport’s favour, as it could be moved away from the main venue - rather than trying to manage 500 Olympic Games sheep into Paris next year, or Los Angeles in 2028.
“The shearing could be held at another venue like they do with other sports,” King said.
King has just arrived in the UK for the 19th Golden Shears World Shearing Championships at the Royal Highland Show in Edinburgh, from Thursday to Sunday, where his Wools of New Zealand Shearing Sports New Zealand team is one of 28 from different countries around the world.
In fact, moving to different centres is in keeping with other shearing events, as venues for competitions over the years have ranged from working woolsheds to open-sided stands at country shows.
Trucks also travel to larger environments, such as town halls and Masterton’s War Memorial Stadium, and greenfields sites such as the huge marquee erected in Le Dorat, France, for the 2019 World Championships.
Shearing Sports New Zealand maintains the competition of shearing and woolhandling is a sport.
They were, like many other sports, developed to both formalise the challenges of what goes on in the workplace (the woolshed) and provide a platform for enhancing the skills needed for a quality wool harvest - once the backbone of the New Zealand economy.
The first known blade shearing competition in New Zealand is thought to have been held in the 1860s, with a published record of an event in 1868 at Waipukurau, in Hawke’s Bay.
The world’s first machine shearing competition is believed to have been held at the Hawke’s Bay A and P Show in 1902, a competition now known as the Great Raihania Shears, in memory of the first winner Rimitiriu Raihania.
Wools of New Zealand Shearing Sports New Zealand Golden Shears World Sheep Shearing and Woolhandling Championships team manager, Ronny King. Photo / SSNZ
The Golden Shears International Shearing Championships was established in Masterton in 1961 with quick global recognition and has been held in court-sports venue the Masterton War Memorial Stadium annually ever since, apart from Covid cancellations in 2021 and 2022.
Long regarded as the “Wimbledon of Shearing”, it spawned the Golden Shears of Great Britain in 1963 at the Royal Bath and West Show Shepton Mallet, Somerset, which also hosted the first Golden Shears World Championships in 1977.
Shearing Sports New Zealand has been recognised by the government sports agency Sport New Zealand for 30 years as the national organisation for the sport.
King, who farms on the outskirts of Pahiatua, in Northern Wairarapa, is used to handling large numbers of sheep, with the Golden Shears in Masterton needing 5000 sheep and attracting over 300 competitors, or 600 in the peak when the New Zealand sheep population was over 70 million, almost three times that of the 2023 flock.
The World Championships, held every 2-4 years, have been hosted at the Masterton Golden Shears four times, in 1980, 1988, 1996 and 2012, and the championships have been held in nine countries.
The question of what makes a sport might be seen in the array of “traditional” world championships over the next five months - rugby, women’s football, one-day cricket, basketball, athletics, cycling and swimming.
Other less “traditional” championships include mountain bike, bog-snorkelling in Wales, skyrunning in Italy, and kids golf (ages 5-12 years) in the US.
A sample of sports events in 2023
June 22-25: Golden Shears World Shearing and Woolhandling Championships, at Royal Highland Show, Edinburgh, Scotland:
June 24-July 14: World Under 20 Rugby Championships, South Africa.
June 26-July 2: World Rafting Championships, Valtellina, Italy.
July 11-16: World Orienteering Championships, Flims Laax, Switzerland.
July 14-30: World Aquatics Championships (including swimming), Fukuoka, Japan.
