Old champ makes surprise return

A champion shearer who first won at the Golden Shears 33 years ago is making a surprise return to the stand at the 45th championships which start in Masterton today.

Samson Te Whata won the junior title in 1972 and followed up with victory in the senior class two years later, but missed out on the coveted open crown despite making the final six times.

He was fourth in his first open final in 1977and his best was runner-up in his last final.

A national representative in the trailblazing trans-Tasman tests of the 1970s, Te Whata did not go empty-handed in Masterton. In 1982 he won the final of an event now known as the Wrightson National.

He is most famous for his 1979-80 summer world nine-hour lamb-shearing record war, with the current Shearing Sport New Zealand chairman John Fagan.

Te Whata has now returned to New Zealand after several years in Australia.

Golden Shears president Greg Herrick was in the office last week when Te Whata walked in "as if he had never been away" - and casually paid the entry fee.

Observers at the Golden Shears said, realistically, Te Whata was unlikely to be in the final among the modern stars, where David Fagan is likely to face a three-way battle, against the season's form shearers John Kirkpatrick, of Napier, and Paul Avery, of Stratford.

But Te Whata may stand a chance in the open championship heats on Friday.

- NZPA