Te Huia smashes record

An unbroken run of 79 days shearing in West Australia earlier this year was the catalyst to King Country shearer Stacey Te Huia breaking the world, eight-hour, ewe-shearing record at Moketenui Station on Wednesday.
Te Huia, 32, a "happily single" father of two, shore 603 strong-wool, predominantly Romney sheep to smash the previous record held by Far North's Matthew Smith, who had managed 578 on January 15.
Just five days after Smith's success, Te Huia made his first attempt at the same record and failed by just five sheep. He said after Wednesday's effort it was nice to get the record back in the family. Older brother Hayden held it for nine years after totalling 495 sheep at Marton in 1999.
Te Huia, of Maniapoto and Tuwharetoa descent, said a bad back had limited his serious training for last summer's attempt to about four months.
His preparation was much more intensive this time with employment with Jury Shearing in Kojonup, West Australia, from August to the start of November, seeing him work a marathon 79 days on the trot. In addition, he ran for an hour before each day in the shed and did an hour of gym work at night. "It all helped the endurance," he reckoned as he drooled over his first beer in eight months.
Te Huia wasn't worried by the rain which fell through most of the week, nor a power cut which came when his fourth and final, two-hour stint was about to get under way.
Contractors Michael Cornelius and Mal McQuillan from the The Lines Co in Te Kuiti, raced more than 20km to the woolshed and discovered an easy-to-fix pole fuse fault a few metres from there. To the relief of the more than 100 supporters, the run home was soon back on, albeit 40 minutes late.
"I wasn't worried at all," says Te Huia, who started his record attempt at 7am and posted 146 in the first two hours to morning smoko, three down on Smith's opening run 11 months ago.
But shearing 39 sheep in less than 30 minutes before the break had Te Huia in the groove and he set a run record of 152 in the two hours to lunch, and then one better to 153 in the third two-hour stretch. His final run of 152 ensured the record was his with plenty to spare.
The quality of the sheep, estimated to have averaged about 55kg each and carrying an average of more than 3kg of wool each, was among the better seen in record attempts and none of the sheep were rejected by the four-man judging panel.
There was no shortage of expertise on the support team either. Managing the record bid was the country's best known shearing personality David Fagan, who 18 years ago to the day had shorn a nine-hour lambs record of 810 in Southland.
Te Huia's woolhandlers were world team champions Sheree Alabaster of Taihape and Keryn Herbert of Te Awamutu, assisted by Hannah Neal of Te Kuiti.