Shearing competition a class act at the Royal Show

The competitors in the first Hawke's Bay schools shearing championship in 2013. Winner Whakapunake Maraki (right), of Flaxmere, has since shorn some seasons in Australia. Photo/Supplied

Some of the youngest shearers in New Zealand will compete in the first event of a show with some of the oldest shearing history as the Great Raihania Shears are shorn during the Royal New Zealand Show in Hastings this week.

The Shears will open with the High School Challenge tomorrow, starting at 10am.
Shearing Sports Hawke's Bay convenor and shearing contractor Colin Watson Paul says entries will be taken from school student shearers up to the start of the event.

The Great Raihania Shears shearing and woolhandling championships will be held on Friday - Hawke's Bay Show day and public holiday - starting at 8am.

The championships, revived in 2004 after the shearing competition had been in recess for about 10 years, are named after shearer Rimitiriu "The Great" Raihania, winner of the Hawke's Bay show title in 1902, thought to have been the first machine shearing competition in the world.

Among those expected to be present to support the schools competition, which was first held in 2013, is Golden Shears and New Zealand champion and former World champion Rowland Smith.

Competitors are expected to come mainly from Napier Boys High School and Lindisfarne College in Hastings, although inaugural winner Whakapunake Maraki was at high school in Flaxmere.

A new trophy is being presented this year, with a miniature to be kept by the winner.
Smith is also expected to line up the next day as he tries to complete a repeat of the Poverty Bay Show and Great Raihania Shears double he won last year, before heading to Australia to shear the first of two 2017-18 home-and-away transtasman tests in Bendigo, Victoria, on October 28.