Office lady gets monkey off her back
Sheree Alabaster wins the glamour woolhandling event
Former world champion woolhandler Sheree Alabaster would have been busy helping in the office at the Taihape A&P Show shears on Saturday. But the local schoolteacher, who has won about 60 titles at the top level, including the world championships final in Norway in 2008, still had time to get the monkey off her back at her home show, where she’s won the glamour woolhandling event just once in 16 years of trying.
“Not sure when it was, but I know it was a long time ago,” she said after the first North Island second-shear woolhandling competition of the season. “I’m stoked.”
In fact, it was in 2006, and she has since been runner-up six times and third twice.
It was a good one to win, scoring more maximum points in the World Championships national team selection North Island series, in a fivehandler final that included three leading South Island series contenders she’s now likely to meet in an interisland showdown at the Golden Shears in Masterton in March, to find the two woolhandlers to represent New Zealand at the World Championships in France in July.
Alabaster, who last April won the New Zealand Shearing Championships open woolhandling final for an eighth time, is currently second in the North Island series behind 2010 world teams champion teammate Keryn Herbert, Te Kuiti, who failed to qualify for Saturday’s final.
The runner-up was former New Zealand championships senior title Brittany Tibble, of Gisborne, who is yet to win an open final, but she showed the breakthrough could be near by beating leading South Island series hopes Chelsea Collier, of Gore, Pagan Karauria, of Alexandra, and reigning world champion Joel Henare, from Gisborne but soon heading back to Motueka where he has been based the last two years.
The 2014 world shearing champion, Rowland Smith, took another step on a determined path he’s following towards trying to regain the title with a crushing victory over reigning world champion and fellow Hawke’s Bay gun and other North Island hopefuls in the open shearing final.
Scoring a third win in eight days, reinforcing his favouritism to retain the Golden Shears and New Zealand titles, which will decide the two world title contenders, Smith ripped through the 20 sheep in 17min 2sec, putting a full sheep around the others in the six-man final, except Pongaroa shearer David Buick, who finished in 17min 41sec.
Also claiming the best quality points, and with Buick suffering in the pen judging, Smith scored his fourth consecutive Taihape Open win by beating runner-up Kirkpatrick by 5.4pts, with third place going to King Country shearer Mark Grainger. ■