The pre-Christmas wet providing relief for some North Island farmers couldn’t have come at a worse time for King Country shearer Stacey Te Huia as he prepares for unfinished business in his second tilt at the World eight-hour ewe-shearing record on Wednesday.
It has been "pissing down," the 30-year-old said in a lunch break while working in a woolshed near Otorohanga today.
The sheep being prepared for the record bid at Motekenui Station, near Benneydale, are wet and the wait is on to see if they will be dry in time for a wool-weigh on Tuesday afternoon, when the fleeces shorn before the judges must not average less than 3kg a sheep.
With the rain expected to ease but dampness adding to the weight of the fleeces, the record could be delayed a day, or until after Christmas.
"Not Christmas Day," Te Huia said. "Wouldn’t get the support. No one would be able to come."
Challenging the record of 578 set by Hawke’s Bay-based Far North shearer Matthew Smith at Waitara Station, near Te Pohue, Hawke’s Bay, on January 15 this year, and having almost claimed the mark with 573 just four days later, Te Huia knows he has a chance and has roped-in big support, with World teams woolhandling champions Sheree Alabaster and Keryn Herbert among the woolhandlers.
Father Dean Te Huia and Te Kuiti contractor Neil Fagan are managing the attempt, but numerous others are also helping as the shearer tries to get the record back in the family, older brother Hayden having once been the man for seven years with a tally of 495, part of a two-stand record set by the siblings at Marton in 1999, when Stacey Te Huia was just 19 years old.
He thought his days chasing records were over when he fell short in his bid at Motekenui last January, and said: "I wanted nothing more to do with it."
A "mate" got him interested again by suggesting a flock "up north" was record-breaking material, Te Huia started specialised training in May, and now he’s back at the Motekenui woolshed, at Mangapehi on State Highway 30 between Te Kuiti and Benneydale.
The station is already in the World Sheep Shearing Records Society books for the glamour nine-hour lamb and ewe records set by Hawke’s Bay guns Dion King and Rodney Sutton respectively just three weeks apart in January 2007, and the women’s eight-hours solo and two-stand lambs records almost two years later by university graduate Ingrid Baynes and mother Marg, a Wairoa farmer.
Starting at 7am and shearing four two-hour runs, with half-hour breaks for morning and afternoon smoko and an hour for lunch, Te Huia will have to average more than 18 sheep a quarter-hour, and will be hoping first to emulate the start Smith got in his first run which ended with 149 on the board - a sheep better for every 15 minutes than the pace set by previous record holder Jimmy Clark when he shore 560 in Southland in January 2008.
Smith was able to moderate his pace for the rest of the day, shearing 143 in each of the other three runs and claiming the record with more than a quarter-hour to go.
Te Huia says he’s given no thought to what’s next if he breaks the record, or whether he would challenge Sutton’s nine-hour record of 721 (averaging over 20 sheep a quarter-hour).
"We’ve got to get these sheep dry first," he said.
