The Hawke's Bay A and P Show's Great Raihania Shears has been cancelled this year despite plans to go ahead with the show in a limited form amid the coronavirus crisis.
The decision has been announced by Flaxmere-based shearing contractor Colin Watson Paul, who has headed the running of the shears since a group was formed to reinstate shearing competition at the show in 2004.
It was celebrated with the renaming of the shearing and woolhandling competition in honour of Rimitiriu "The Great" Raihania, winner of the world's first machine-shearing competition, at the Hawke's Bay show, in 1902.
Unlike other sports-oriented events at the show at Showgrounds Hawke's Bay Tomoana in Hastings, the shearing sports are held indoors, in a historic pavilion.
While show organisers are planning competitor-only events outdoors with clusters of no more than 100 people across the 42 hectares of the showgrounds off Kenilworth, Karamu and Elwood roads, Watson Paul saw it as too difficult to stage the shearing and woolhandling and meet all the requirements of the Covid-19 alert levels that might apply at the time.