Stoney bids for world nine hour shearing record

Napier shearer Steve Stoney is to make a bid for the world nine-hour lamb shearing record later this month - hoping to wipe out the name of the champion he helped get into the books.
The 41-year-old Stoney is scheduled to make his attempt on November 26 at Kahuranaki Station, southeast of Hastings, targeting the record of 866 shorn by Dion King in a King Country woolshed in January 2007.
It will come eight years and two days after Stoney was King's right-hand man in a successful bid for the eight-hour record at Mangatutu, west of Napier.
Stoney has already been in the record books, for a three-stand eight-hours lambs record shorn in 1997 which survived nine years before being broken in Southland.
Working for Napier contractor Farrell Chrystal, the jockey-sized Stoney signalled a possible challenge for the nine-hour record when he blasted through 850 lambs in a test-run at Kahuranaki a year ago today.
Ever since, it has only been a question of when, the earliest option this week ruled because the lambs were unlikely to reach the required average of at least 0.9kg of wool each. The new target date was decided last weekend, and the wool-weight threshold will be put to the test as four judges appointed by the World Shearing Records Society gather at Kahuranaki on the eve of the record bid.
Society chairman Mark Baldwin, of Australia, will be the statutory overseas judge, Colin Gibson, will fill the South Island berth, and judges from the North Island will be Doug Oliver and Shearing Sports New Zealand chairman John Fagan.
It will be the third solo nine-hour lambs record attempt in Hawke's Bay. The first was in 1976 when Charles Pearse shore a record-breaking 602 near Te Pohue.