Two young shearers have given Masterton a good chance of early hometown success in this week's Golden Shears and world championships after qualifying for all three junior finals in a big pre-shears weekend across the central North Island.
It was a big moment for 15-year-old Dylan McGruddy, whose move home from Australia was rewarded with his first appearance in a final in New Zealand and was celebrated with a win at the Taumarunui Jamboree Shears.
Third was Ethan Pankhurst, a 20-year-old Masterton shearer's son and second-year Lincoln University student who had already won four finals in the South Island, including the prestigious Otago championship a fortnight earlier.
On Saturday, Pankhurst was fourth and McGruddy fifth in an Apiti Sports final won by Paul Hodges of Geraldine and yesterday at the Pahiatua Shears McGruddy was third and Pankhurst fourth, behind winner Andrew Leith of Dipton.
Only the two Wairarapa shearers qualified for all three finals, as hundreds of shearers and woolhandlers from around the world merged as an unofficial performing troupe headed for the Golden Shears.
An unprecedented number of countries was represented in semifinals, including England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Isle of Man, France, Germany, Canada, US and the Falkland Islands, all headed for the world's best-known shearing event in Masterton's War Memorial Stadium.
The Shears starts on Wednesday and ends on Saturday, featuring more than 20 events held at Golden Shears each year, along with six world championship events in machine shearing, woolhandling and blade shearing.
Most of the 100-plus world championships entrants will also compete in the Golden Shears, along with others from their countries in New Zealand for the Golden Shears experience.
But the competition is tough, judging by the performance of the rookies now about revel on their home patch, each born with shearing in his veins.
McGruddy sheared a sheep for the first time when he was 9 or 10, and got the bug from brother Terence.
"He had some sheep and he didn't want to shear them, so I did," he said.
He moved with his parents to Port Lincoln in South Australia last April, but bid them in farewell in January and returned to New Zealand, target Golden Shears, where he had competed in the 2010 and 2011 novice competitions.
Pankhurst was even younger when he first sheared a sheep, at the age of 7. His father Bruce put a handpiece in his hand, held a sheep up and helped him put in the first blows.
He was born in the South Island where his father was shearing in the early 1990s, but apart from competitions - reaching 13 finals so far this season - one of his biggest moments was closer to home near Masterton when he shore his first 200 in a day early this summer.
Both have just taken part in pre-Shears courses and Pankhurst said he had learned much from Tectra instructorand open-class shearer Kevin Hessell.
While the shearers were doing their stuff in Stadium Pahiatua yesterday, woolhandlers were competing in their pre-Shears championships at Massey University's Riverside Farm, at Mikimiki.
Today and tomorrow competitors are involved in training days at Cross Keys, an hour from Masterton and past Whareama, and at Riverside.