HB hopes for rural sports awards and games

Farm fencer Tony Bouskill, who nailed the Rural Sportsman of the Year Award in 2019 and is a finalist again this year. Photo / File

Hawke's Bay will again be well represented in major events at the New Zealand Rural Games in Palmerston North this weekend.

Prolific shearing winner Rowland Smith and farm fencer Tony Bouskill are again finalists in the Rural Sportsman of the Year Award, up for presentation tomorrow night, and are competing in two of the most popular events at the games.

Both former winners and world champions, their opposition in the awards race is appropriately-named multiple world tree-climbing champion Scott Forrest, of Kawerau, but there are no Hawke's Bay finalists in the other categories.

Smith won the inaugural Rural Sportsman of the Year Award in 2017, fellow Hawke's Bay shearer and world champion John Kirkpatrick won in 2018, and Bouskill won in 2019. Last year it was won by world champion Canterbury blade shearer Allan Oldfield.

Awards are also presented for Rural Sportswoman of the Year, Young Rural Sportsperson of the Year, and Contribution to Rural Sports, with awards for lifetime legacies in rural sports.

It will only be the start of the weekend for Smith and Bouskill, Smith being the only Hawke's Bay competitor among the 10 shearers in Sunday's New Zealand Speed Shear Championship, while Bouskill will defend his speed fencing title on Saturday.

There may be extra pressure on Smith in the speed shear, with the TAB confirming this week it will be accepting fixed-odds betting on the event. With shearers averaging about 20 seconds a sheep or less, it will be possibly the shortest event on which the national betting agency has accepted wagers, either in horse racing or sports betting, which was introduced in 1996.

Meanwhile, Napier Boys' High School is among five schools from across the central North Island in the first New Zealand Secondary Schools Shearing Championship on Saturday, having been represented at all eight Hawke's Bay Great Raihania Shears secondary schools events since that competition was first held in 2013. Teams will comprise four shearers and a woolhandler.

Hawke's Bay is also represented by sheep dog trialist Bex Scragg in a three-way teams trial.

Other regular rurally-based sports such as wood chopping are mixed with more novelty and have-a-go events such as gumboot and egg throwing, and speed milking (the hand way).

The games, which started in Queenstown in 2015 and are now established in Palmerston North Square, are being extended to three days for the first time.