The 30-year-old gun is a prolific winner of single-sheep speed shear events, including during the 2017 World Championships in Invercargill and the 2019 Championships in France.
He bounced back in style to do 190 in each of the Thursday afternoon runs to beat the record of 746 shorn by 19-year-old Taihape shearer Reuben Alabaster near Ohakune on Tuesday.
Alabaster also stumbled in the two hours after morning tea, during his successive runs of 188, 183, 187, and 188.
Fagan put the blip down to the way the body handled things – going from “0-to-100″ from the start, with a heart rate of 160-170 by morning tea, with just a half-an-hour break before getting into it again.
There had also been a need to change a comb during the run.
The eight-hour record attempt was made up of four-two-hour runs, broken by half-hour breaks for morning and afternoon tea, and a lunch hour.
Fagan said the short morning break was the most challenging, the result highlighted in most eight-hour record attempts, including that by Alabaster, who was one of the first to congratulate Fagan at the end of the day.
When it came to records, the half-hour morning break was not enough to relax before getting back into it, but it didn’t matter so much in the daily grind in the woolshed, where it is the standard working day, Fagan said.
By comparison, the nine-hour day (also a standard but now less frequent working day), has an hour-long break (for breakfast) after the first two hours, followed by four runs of 1hr 45mins each.
Listen to Jamie Mackay interview Jack Fagan on The Country below:
The plan yesterday had been to “basically speed shear” all day, he said.
After the late morning blip, Fagan was still ahead of target at lunchtime and was confident of a better recovery and the big shear in the afternoon.
Ultimately he averaged 38.196 seconds a lamb throughout the day, caught shorn and dispatched, and while he wasn’t intending to be back at work in the woolshed until after the family Christmas break, he was considering competing in a speed shear in Taumarunui tonight.
The success of Fagan and Alabaster this week sparked conjecture that the two may eventually target the pinnacle of the nine-hour record, currently 872 and held by English shearer Stu Connor.
It also caused speculation that that record will eventually go over 900, a tally which several have passed in non-record shears, without judges and the rules.
The pair each had four World Sheep Shearing Society judges watching over them, focused on making the shearers kept up to the quality standards required by the rules.
In a five-stand nine record a year ago, Fagan shore 811 to beat the 810 his father, and shearing legend, Sir David Fagan shore to set a record in Southland on December 22, 1992.
Although he hadn’t given much thought about making a bid for the nine-hour record Fagan said “anyone who thinks 100 an hour is possible (in a record bid) just has never shorn in a record.”
He noted the eight-hour record had climbed by just 23 since Southern Hawke’s Bay shearer and farmer Justin Bell shore 731 on December 6, 2002.
That was less than three weeks after eventual Golden Shears open champion Dion King set a record of 695.
It had been almost 11 years since a record of 744 was set by Irish shearer Ivan Scott near Taupō - that Alabaster beat it by two on Tuesday - making the crucial record-breaking catch only in the last minute.
The next event, in a flurry of post-pandemic restrictions record activity, will be on January 4 when Simon Goss (brother of women’s rugby star Sarah Hirini and son of two Golden Shears champions) will pair up with Rotorua gun Jamie Skiffington for an attempt on the two-stand lamb record for eight hours.
