Shearing: World champ fails to make finals spot

A tough selection process saw Rowland Smith miss out on the New Zealand shearing team for the World Champs by 3.2 hundredths of a point.

Reigning world champion shearer Rowland Smith was the ultimate victim of one of the toughest of national selection series in any sport when his chance of defending the title ended at the Canterbury Show in Christchurch last Friday.

The series, which started in Southland in January, comprised six points rounds, the top six qualifying for the final which was shorn over 20 sheep each, a mix of eight full-woolled sheep, six second-shear and six lambs.

Smith, the 30-year-old who won the world title in 2014 in Gorrie, Ireland, was a warm favourite to win one of the two machine-shearing positions in the six-person Shearing Sports New Zealand team for the World Shearing and Woolhandling Championships in Invercargill on February 8-11.

He had won five of the six rounds, including the most prized -- the Golden Shears and New Zealand championships open titles -- and was widely predicted to make the team again, joined by 2014 teammate and fellow Hawke's Bay shearer John Kirkpatrick, or by Southland shearer Nathan Stratford.

But while Smith made the most of the pace before being pipped on the final lamb by second Southland hope Darin Forde, it was the quality points that prevailed as Kirkpatrick and Stratford claimed the crucial first and second places -- Smith, in third place, missing selection by just 3.2 hundredths of a point.

Heading now for his fourth world championships with teams titles behind him from 2008 and 2012 but still missing the most-revered individual title, Kirkpatrick, 45, and experienced national representative but world championships newcomer Stratford, 42, will be joined in the team by Gisborne woolhandlers Joel Henare, 25, and Maryanne Baty, 31, who finished first and second in their selection final, and South Canterbury blade shearers Tony Dobbs, 54, and Phil Oldfield, 55, the first two in a series shorn throughout the Canterbury region, where most of New Zealand's bladeshearing takes place.

Baty was the bolter, saying she was "shocked", having made the final at the last opportunity with a big effort at last month's Great Raihania Shears in Hastings, the scene of her only open final win to date, in 2015. In Christchurch she dislodged 2008 world champion Sheree Alabaster, of Taihape, and Alabaster's 2010 world teams champion partner Keryn Herbert, of Te Kuiti.

Any disappointments over missing out were quickly overshadowed by the camaraderie and spirit of the shearing sports, with Smith, Herbert and Alabaster among at least eight competitors who travelled straight back to the North Island to compete at the Central Hawke's Bay A and P Show in Waipukurau on Saturday.

Herbert and Alabaster were first and second in the CHB Open woolhandling final, and Kirkpatrick won the open shearing title he last won in 2011. But Smith and defending CHB champion and fellow selection series finalist David Buick, of Pongaroa, did not make the CHB final.

Jean-Pierre Bouyer, of Hastings, had his second senior shearing final win, retaining the title he won in his only previous competition win 12 months earlier. The runner-up was Ricci Stevens, 24 hours after winning the New Zealand Corriedale Championships senior final.