Hawke's Bay honours: Champion shearer and Hawke's Bay trailblazer becomes ONZM

John Kirkpatrick winning the World title in Invercargill in 2017.

John Kirkpatrick, made an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit (ONZM) in the Queen's Birthday and Platinum Jubilee Honours, was the shearer who set Hawke's Bay shearing alight when he became the region's first to win the Golden Shears Open title in 2002.

It was a particularly notable win, ending the 12-year winning run of the since-knighted King Country legend David Fagan - winner of multiple World titles and more than 640 finals across the globe.

But Kirkpatrick's eventual four wins in the glamour event, plus three world teams title wins and the ultimate accolade of individual world champion in 2017, was to become part of Hawke's Bay's own dominance of some of the world's biggest shearing events.

Three Hawke's Bay shearers have now won the world title, and four have won the Golden Shears Open, of which 13 of the 19 finals back to Kirkpatrick's breakthrough have been won by shearers from the region.

From the East Coast, Kirkpatrick has been based in Napier for more than 25 years.

He and his wife Raylene run a family shearing contracting from a base at Pakipaki.

Kirkpatrick shone in competition in 1993, winning the Golden Shears Intermediate and Senior titles among 23 lower-grade wins before first shearing in the Open class in 1994.

He has now won 188 Open finals (second worldwide only to Sir David Fagan).

They include 22 overseas (15 of them in Scotland, England, Wales and Northern Ireland) and about 30 in Otago and Southland, where he shore a day's-best 650 lambs in a four-stand record of 2556 for eight hours in February 2013.

It was on one of his trips to the South Island that he won in Christchurch, and then met Princess Anne.

His 2002 triumph at the Golden Shears in Masterton, where he was to later twice win premier all-breeds title the PGG Wrightson National Circuit, helped him become Shearing Sports New Zealand's No 1-ranked Open shearer for the first of a record 10 times, the latest being in 2016.

He has also been a shearers' delegate to the Shearing Sports New Zealand national committee, and selected by shearers from around the world as their representative at the Golden Shears World Council championships congress.

His wife, who he met in the woolsheds in Wairarapa and who encouraged him to shear in competitions, has been prominent in shearing points scoring, daughter Angela has been an Open class wool handling winner, and son Daniel was a New Zealand age group world champion and Hurricanes and Blues Super Rugby player.