Sacha Bond gets into her work in the first run of today's attempt on the record at Centrehill Station, near Mossburn, northern Southland.
Sacha Bond gets into her work in the first run of today's attempt on the record at Centrehill Station, near Mossburn, northern Southland.
7pm update
King Country shearer Sacha Bond has broken two world records for sheep shearing in under two months.
The 30-year-old mum this afternoon took out the nine-hour strong wool ewes world record, reaching a total of 458 (exceeding the current record held by Kerri-Jo Te Huia by 6) at Pāmu farm, Centre Hill Station, in the Te Anau Basin.
Bond arrived onsite at Centre Hill Station early today, and commenced shearing at 5am. She averaged one sheep every 71.1 seconds.
Breaking this record has also made her the first woman to hold the nine-hour solo record for both lambs and ewes in over 40 years.
McSkimming said “I feel a bit like her really … quite emotional!”
Bond, with her daughter, reflected on her win: “I’m feeling pretty exhausted and glad it’s over to be honest, but it’s pretty special to have her here.
“All of it was pretty hard, but the morning was especially challenging. It was cold and I was quite nervous.”
The new dual world record holder was looking forward to a hot shower and some time to relax.
Earlier story
A dramatic afternoon is expected as King Country shearer Sacha Bond battles through a world women’s nine-hour strong wool ewe shearing record bid in a Northern Southland woolshed.
Starting at 5am, and originally forecast by some as capable of over 500 for the day, she’s hovered all morning around the target of an average of 12.5834 sheep a quarter-hour to break the record of 452 shorn by Kerri-Jo Te Huia in 2018.
At the start of the hour-long midday lunch break, with five-and-a-half hours’ shearing gone at Centrehill Station, near Mossburn, she had a provisional tally of 277 – an average of 12.59 sheep a quarter-hour.
She faces two more 1hr 45min runs taking the attempt through to the end at 5pm.
Bond made a tentative start to her record bid this morning, just on pace in the first two hours to breakfast.
Bond shore 98 in the first run, which compared with Te Huia’s first two-hour run of 101.
She had upped the pace slightly in the early stages of the second run, statistically forecast at about 8.25am at that pace to shear about 465 for the day.
She eventually shore 91 in the second run from 8am -9.45am.
Te Huia shore runs of 101, 90, 87, 86 and 88.
The attempt is being live streamed on the Sacha Bond World Record Shearing and Perkinz Farming Products Facebook pages, with organisers alerting followers to avoid other links, especially those that appear in comments on Facebook.
Today’s record got the green light from the four-man World Sheep Shearing Records Society judging panel when 31.06kg of wool was shorn from 10 ewes in a sample shear on Thursday afternoon, safely meeting the requirement of an average of at least 3kg of wool per sheep.
If she succeeds, Bond will be the first shearer in over 40 years to hold world nine-hour strong wool records for both lambs and ewes simultaneously.
Bond, originally from Woodvlle, is targeting the ewes record of 452, shorn in a Wairarapa woolshed in January 2018 by Te Huia, originally from Marton, in the only attempt at the record since a rewriting of shearing record rules and the establishment of the World Sheep Shearing Records Society in 1983.
With 500 a foreseeable goal, mum-of-one Bond is also likely to have in her sights a tally of 522 shorn by Northland shearer Maureen Hyett in the South Island in February 1982.
Hyett’s tally is still the most ewes shorn by a woman in any record attempt, but because of the setting of the new standards, it is not recognised as the record in the modern era.
Shearing at Centrehill Station, where she set the lambs record near Mossburn, Northern Southland, Bond is tackling sheep similar to her weight or heavier.
It’s the last record attempt in a frantic New Zealand season which has already seen the smashing of three of the four strong wool solo records for women, and is being monitored closely by four qualified records-shearing judges appointed by the records society.
Six shearers – four males and two females – have held both ewes and lambs strong wool records for nine hours since the first records regime was set in 1967.
The first was Waikato shearer Jack Dowd who held the men’s records simultaneously in the 1970s, with a lambs tally of 637 shorn on December 2, 1977, going with a ewes record of 543 he had held since January 22, 1974.
In Australia, Dwayne Black, from New Zealand, held the Merino (fine wool) ewes and lambs records for nine hours simultaneously after two big efforts in West Australia in the summer of 2004-2005.
The current men’s strong wool ewes record for nine hours is 731, shorn by Cornwall farmer and New Zealand shearer Matthew Smith in England in July 2016.
