Catherine Mullooly in action during the record-breaking effort. Photo / Shearing Sports New Zealand
Catherine Mullooly in action during the record-breaking effort. Photo / Shearing Sports New Zealand
One of New Zealand’s most successful female competition shearers has smashed a world shearing record by almost 10 sheep an hour.
Shearing on Wednesday at Nukuhakari Station in coastal King Country in one of records-shearing’s most stunning displays, 34-year-old mum-of-two Catherine Mullooly set a new solowomen’s eight hours strongwool ewes record of 465.
She had a quality rating of 10.4, well within the threshold set by the World Sheep Shearing Records Society and considered by most onlookers as “amazing” considering the struggle with “stroppy” sheep during the day.
Catherine Mullooly shearing the record-breaking 387th sheep. Photo / Shearing Sports New Zealand
Starting at 7am, Mullooly shore successive two-hour, above-record-pace runs of 116, 117 and 116 before passing the target about 3.40pm and magic number 400 soon afterwards, with still over an hour to go to the finish at 5pm.
Signing-off with 116 in the last run, after one was rejected by the four-man Records Society referees panel. she averaged over 58 sheep an hour throughout the day - about 28 tonnes of sheep hauled on to the board, shorn and departing through the porthole, clipping over 1.6 tonnes of wool - and also passed the women’s nine-hour record of 452 in the last quarter-hour.
Shearing legend Sir David Fagan was unable to be present but, watching livestreaming mid-afternoon, said he was particularly proud of the quality that had been made, showing the benefits of a winning competition career, during which Mullooly in 2014 became the first women to attain a No 1 ranking in any grade since national sports organisation Shearing Sports New Zealand put a rankings system in place in 1992.
He said Mullooly and new lambshearing records holders Megan Whitehead (686 lambs in eight hours) and Sacha Bond (720 lambs in nine hours) had taken women’s shearing “to a new level” and he looked forward to seeing them in women’s events and other competitions throughout the grades later in the season.
Amy Silcock (left) with shearing advocate Joanne Crawford in the Nukuhakari woolshed to see the breaking of a record Silcock held for just three days. Photo / Shearing Sports New Zealand
The sheep had been “challenging” but Mullooly was able to restore the control without lowering her standards, he said.
“It’s brilliant,” he said.
Referees panel convenor Andy Rankin, of Loch Lomond, Scotland, had seen Mullooly shear in Scotland some years ago and said she was then a good senior shearer he knew would succeed at the top “if she kept at it”.
Tom Wilson (left) and Alan MacDonald - both former world champions and record holders - at today's shearing attempt. Wilson is also director of Elite Wool Industry Training. Photo / Shearing Sports New Zealand
“It was a good record,” he said, adding the good quality of the shear, and the organisation of the day, made it easier for the officiators.
Mullooly, from Matawai, Gisborne, and who has won competitions in the Junior, Intermediate and Senior grades and was a quarter-finalist in the New Zealand Merino Shears Open championship in Alexandra in September, had a big team of supporters, including timekeepers and now fellow record-breakers Coel L’Huillier and Daniel Langlands, another record-holder in Kaleb Foote monitoring the gear and farmers Hamish Nelson and Bridget St, along with support from father Myles Mullooly and partner Audrey Tamanui-Nunn, and her own partner, Ardy Donnelly and sons Brynn, 3, and Coel, 1.
Catherine Mullooly in action today. Photo / Shearing Sports New Zealand
There was also a team of woolhandlers and others helping with her physical wellbeing during the day.
