Ricci Stevens, Napier-based Gisborne shearer who won New Zealand Championships junior shearing title. Photo / Doug Laing
Ricci Stevens, Napier-based Gisborne shearer who won New Zealand Championships junior shearing title. Photo / Doug Laing
Napier's Ricci and Angela Stevens made it a couple-couple as they won their respective senior shearing sports events at the Wairarapa A and P Show's Spring Shears at Clareville, near Carterton, on Saturday.
Ricci Stevens, originally from Gisborne, won the senior shearing final while wife Angela, daughter of world championshearer John Kirkpatrick, won the senior wool handling final.
It was Ricci Stevens' first shearing win in almost a year, since kicking off his senior-class career with two wins last November, including the New Zealand Corriedale Championships' senor title in Christchurch. But he did have a good season without the handpiece, becoming the No 1 ranked junior wool handler in New Zealand.
Angela Stevens has now won six senior titles, including the Poverty Bay A and P Show title on October 14, passing the threshold for being graded up to open class next season.
It was not such a successful weekend for Kirkpatrick who with New Zealand teammates Rowland Smith, of Maraekakaho, and Troy Pyper, from Southland, was unable to break Australia's domination of shearing tests in Australia and were beaten by over 40pts in the first transtasman shearing clash of the season.
Kirkpatrick was the best of the New Zealanders in which each shore six merino wethers and six crossbred lambs, but they were outclassed particularly on the fine wool -beaten by Australians Daniel McIntyre, Shannon Warnest and Jason Wingfield.
It was New Zealand's seventh consecutive machine shearing test loss in Australia, since winning at Hay, NSW, in 2010, but New Zealand had won the last test in Masterton in March and will favoured for a repeat of that triumph in just over four months' time.
Some Kiwi honour was restored on Saturday when Gisborne's Joel Henare and Maryanne Baty won a transtasman wool handling tests, and Canterbury's Tony Dobbs and Phil Oldfield won the blade shearing test.
Kirkpatrick, Smith, Pyper, Henare, Baty and Ricci and Angela Stevens are all likely to be competing at the Central Hawke's Bay A and P Show in Waipukurau on November 11.
