Golden Shears winner takes open title

Napier shearer John Kirkpatrick may have missed his dream of winning the world championship but he did the next best thing on Saturday night when he added the New Zealand open title to the Golden Shears crown he won in Masterton four weeks ago.

It was the 11th win of the season for the 41-year-old grandfather, enabling him to win the Bowen Trophy as the top-ranked shearer in New Zealand for a sixth consecutive year.

In the national championships open final at Te Kuiti he headed home an all-Hawke's Bay trifecta, beating Hastings-based Northland shearer and defending champion Rowland Smith by 0.771pts, with just one one-thousandth of a point back to third placegetter Dion King, also of Hastings.

But the race between Kirkpatrick and King for fastest time was the feature, just two seconds separating the pair with Kirkpatrick first to the button, finishing his 20 sheep in 14min 56.05sec. Early pacemaker Smith was third off in just over 15min 18sec. Veteran hometown hero David Fagan, winner of the event 18 times between 1986 to 2010, was fourth.

It was Kirkpatrick's third open win at the nationals, to go with four Golden Shears opens. And it was the second time he'd won both events in the same year.

Southland shearer Nathan Stratford, the first shearer from the South Island to make the team in 11 years, won the New Zealand Shears Circuit, and a place with Kirkpatrick in the New Zealand team to tour the UK in June and July.

King won the third open-class shearing title of the championships, the North Island Shearer of the Year final, on Friday.

Former world woolhandling champion Sheree Alabaster successfully defended the New Zealand open woolhandling title, her sixth win in the event. She beat runner-up Veronica (Ronnie) Goss, of Kimbolton, by five points, with less than two more points to Gisborne's Joel Henare, who won the world title in Masterton on March 3.

Waipukurau shearer Tysson Hema also completed a Golden Shears-New Zealand Championships double in the senior shearing, as did Kaeo's Bryce Guy in the intermediate class. Guy's brother, Charlie, won the junior title, and the novice title was won by Tegwyn Bradley, of Woodville.

Eketahuna's Kim Sowry won the senior woolhandling final and Stevie Mason-Smallman, of Taihape, the junior woolhandling title.