It costs more than $10,000 each, but that's the price New Zealand's top shearers are paying for the chance to represent their country in the world championships in Masterton in four weeks.
The estimate was made after Hawke's Bay-based Northland shearer Rowland Smith won the latest New Zealand team selectionseries round on Saturday.
After winning the North Island Championships open final at the Rangitikei Shearing Sports in Marton, Smith said airfares, transport, accommodation and wages lost while chasing the black singlet was costing competitors at least $10,000 each. "But nobody's talked about it," he said. "When everyone entered the series, they did it because they believed they could do it. It's all for the singlet."
"There's no prizemoney, just the uniform," said Invercargill shearer Nathan Stratford, who leads the series by one point from Napier gun and series favourite John Kirkpatrick, despite missing a place in today's six-man final.
The series started with 22 entrants in Christchurch in November, with further rounds at Waipukurau, Lumsden, Winton, Taihape and Marton, and the final counter at next week's Otago championships in Balclutha.
The top 12 then face a showdown at the Southern Shears in Gore on February 18, with the winner and runner-up representing New Zealand in the 15th World Shearing and Woolhandling Championships during the Golden Shears in Masterton, from February 29 to March 1.
Smith, whose open-class coming-of-age came last year with second place in the Golden Shears open final, a New Zealand open win in Te Kuiti and a national team tour of the UK, won a double in Taihape and at the non-series Rotorua Show last weekend.
He was in complete command again on Saturday, his winning time of 12min 20.88sec for 15 sheep being almost 40sec ahead of second-man-off Kirkpatrick, who had to settle for fourth place when quality penalties were included.
The judges' pens gave Smith a winning margin of 3.537pts over 50-year-old King Country stalwart David Fagan, who was third off but made up some leeway with quality, showing he remained right in the hunt for a sixth world individual title.
South Island-based Marton shearer Jimmy Samuels won the North Island senior final from favourite and Hawke's Bay-based Jack Robinson, from Northern Ireland, while Napier-based English shearer Dean Nelmes scored the biggest success of his career by winning the intermediate final.
All other events in Marton were called off because of a shortage of dry sheep after wet weather.
