Golden Shears kicks off in Masterton with largest entry numbers in years

Golden Shears has attracted bumper entry numbers this year. Photo / Peter Nikolaison

The Golden Shears starts in Masterton today with the biggest entry numbers in many years.

Around 500 shearers and woolhandlers are competing, which is more than 25 per cent up on last year.

Factors for the increase include greater numbers of competitors from overseas working in New Zealand this summer – including a group from Mongolia and an exchange group of young shearers partnered with New Zealand trainer Elite Wool Industry Training and Australian trainers.

There are also competitors from Scotland, England, Ireland, Northern Ireland, Wales, France and Germany.

Other reasons for the numbers are the rebound from Covid-era border closures and the higher-profile shearing has been enjoying from world record attempts during the summer - especially new women’s eight and nine-hour records on both ewes and lambs.

The five shearing grades and four woolhandling grades, from novice to open, have a combined capacity entry of 508.

The Golden Shears is being livestreamed here.

Office manager Deb Keats said almost all spots were filled, with late entries queueing up, in the hope of getting runs if there were any withdrawals.

Some have entered both shearing and woolhandling, but with the addition of some wool pressing competitors who are not in shearing or woolhandling events, the number of individual competitors is expected to round off at about 500.

It’s almost twice as many as the biggest entry at any of the 45 competitions on the 2023-2024 Shearing Sports New Zealand calendar.

Last year’s Golden Shears entries for shearing and woolhandling came to 388.

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New Golden Shears International Shearing Championships Society president Trish Stevens said they were absolutely overwhelmed.

“We are particularly pleased with the numbers of novice and junior entries.”

The novice shearing (66 entries), junior shearing (72), and novice woolhandling (24) grades have all reached capacity, while junior woolhandling still had a few places left yesterday afternoon - the capacity for this grade is 48.

The action kicked off this morning in Masterton’s War Memorial Stadium, where the Golden Shears have been held annually since 1961, except for Covid cancellations in 2021 and 2022.

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Shearing Sports New Zealand chairman Sir David Fagan, who has a record 16 titles from the Golden Shears, said he was excited by the numbers.

“It makes me feel like entering again.”

He said that while New Zealand sheep numbers had dipped below 26 million (focused on breeding ewes), there was still plenty of shearing in the workplace, with the combination of main shear, second shear and lambs expanding the numbers shorn to more than 50 million.

The competition started at 7.45am this morning and will end with the 20-sheep Golden Shears Open Shearing Championship final – aka the “Wimbledon” of shearing – on Saturday night.

Teams events include a schools’ shearing match on Thursday, transtasman test matches in woolhandling and shearing, and a new regional teams contest.