Bay shearer Smith's big hit at Golden Shears

Rowland Smith was the hot favourite to win the Open final. PHOTO/SUPPLIED

Hawke's Bay shearer Rowland Smith on Saturday completed an amazing triple-banger cleansweep at the Golden Shears, while in training for a major goal 20,000km away later in the year.

The 30-year-old year, who won his fourth Golden Shears Open title, his first PGG Wrightson National all-breeds title and spearheaded a New Zealand test match win over Australia confirmed he will on July 24 tackle the World eight hours strongwool ewes record at brother Matt's farm in Cornwall, England.

The target for a record once held by Matt Smith who last year reacjhed the pinnacle with a nine-hours record of 731 at the Cornwall farm, is 605, set by Southland shearer Leon Samuels two weeks ago.

Rowland Smith confirmed his plans yesterday to Hawke's Bay Today, back home after the treble triumph which was further consolation for missing out on a place in the New Zealand team for last month's World Championships and the chance to defend the title he won in 2014.

"I'm already in training," said the two-metre shearing giant after a gigantuan effort which included overcoming the finewooled merino element of both the PGG Wrightson National and the test, in which he was the first New Zealand to be the top individual in eight tests since March 2013.

His all-breeds and Golden Shears Open wins on Saturday took him to 11 consecutive competition wins in 30 days, including a Southland All-Nations Open final World Championships support event in Invercargill and two weeks ago the 100th win of an open-class career which started in late 2006, with Golden Shears Junior and Senior wins already behind him from his teenage years growing up around Ruawai in Northland.

With Golden Shears Open wins also in 2013, 2014 and last year and the PGG Wrightson National win, he has now matched the record of Napier shearer John Kirkpatrick, who was runner-up in trying to score a second win in the all-breeds event.

Kirkpatrick on Friday was a shock quarter-final elimination from the open championship, after being in the first three every year since 1999 - except for a semifinal elimination in 2009 and 2015, when he was out because of a shoulder injury.

It was the 10th time the open final had been won by a Hawke's Bay shearer since 2002, when Kirkpatrick ended the 12-year winning run of Te Kuiti shearing legend David Fagan (since knighted) and also became the first from Hawke's Bay to ever win the Golden Shears Open, which was first shorn in 1961.

Other Hawke's Bay triumphs in the three-day championships were Kahuranaki farmer Mark Ferguson's win in the Junior shearing final, the first Hawke's Bay Golden Shears lower grade shearing win since 2012, and a double for Kirkpatrick's son-in-law, Ricci Stevens, in the Junior woolhandling final, and the Triathlon, the best combined points of those competing in all three disciplines of shearing, woolhandling and woolpressing.

Stevens claimed a second place in the woolpressing pairs final, Waipawa's Aaron Bell was third in the senior shearing final and sheared in a four-person team win in the YFC shearing and woolhandling event, in which Dannevirke youngster and woolhandler Cortez Ostler was in the second-placed team. On the opening day, Ariana Hadfield was third in the novice shearing final.

Smith, who lives on a Maraekakaho block with wife Ingrid and their two children, was the hot favourite to win the open final, but had looked under some threat in the heats, quarter-finals and semifinals although making it comfortably through to the final, shorn in the best of Golden Shears Open fever-pitch atmospheres.

With the pace made by 2015 champion, Taranaki farmer and Scotland international Gavin Mutch, the crowd bayed for a Kiwi in charge and got it when Smith hit the front just in the last of the 20 sheep, finishing in 17min 19.05sec, four seconds ahead of Mutch.

Also with the best-quality points, as Mutch ticked-up the penalties, Smith ultimately had a comfortable 3.325 point margin over Feilding shearer Aaron Haynes, who crept into second place overall.

■ The results will be in Thursday's edition of The Country.