Photo / NZ Ploughing Association
By Kim Moodie of RNZ
New Zealand's best ploughing talent is set to represent the country in Ireland this year at the World Ploughing Championships.
Ian Woolley and Bob Mehrtens, who took out the top titles at the New Zealand Ploughing Championships in Seddon earlier this month, are now preparing to compete against the world's best in September.
Woolley, who won the Silver Plough conventional competition, told RNZ he was excited to compete, and to soak up the atmosphere, as the event draws a huge crowd.
"It's basically their National Field Days, there's 100,000-odd people there each day for three days, although the ploughing is on the outskirts of where the main show is taking place.
"But there's still a lot of people wandering around and viewing the ploughing. It's the largest outdoor event in Europe, I think, the Irish Ploughing Competition."
Up to 400,000 people are expected to attend the event this year in Ratheniska, southwest of the capital Dublin.
Woolley said he and Mehrtens - who won the reversible class at the recent competition - will borrow a tractor once they've arrived in Ireland, but he's sending his plough over to compete.
"Just due to how it performed here at the New Zealand finals, I was told by two past world winners: 'You need to take that plough', so we're going to send it over on air freight."
In the meantime, he's training to match the top-tier Irish talent.
"I've got notes that you use for ploughing anyway, and what the plough is doing at the moment is pretty right on the button to my notes or my guides," he said.
"So, I'm pretty happy with how the plough is going. We arrive there two-and-a-half, three weeks before the actual competition itself, so we've got time to get ourselves seated in and do quite a bit of practice and get ourselves focussed."
But Woolley said it's a fine balance - and the trick was to avoid over-practising.
"About three years ago, we were competing in the US and we practised for three weeks straight, we didn't have a day off.
"Come the competition days, on the first day both Bob and I, we didn't do too well, we were tenth out of 30-something. And to us, we didn't have a good day.
"So, you can overcook it and you've just got to have a couple of days off here and there, to let your brain relax."
Woolley said competing takes a huge amount of concentration and total focus.
"Ploughing is like a lot of sports, it's 95 per cent concentration," he said.
"If you're not concentrating, and you're looking to see the crowd, or seeing who's driving a different tractor that what you are, or looking at the sun, or whatever, you're not, you're not focused.
"So therefore, you're not going to do well, you're going to miss something. Reading what's happening in front of you and behind you and that sort of thing, you've got to be fully focussed, otherwise you might as well not even start the day, really."
But when everything aligns, Woolley said he knows when things are going well.
"When the plough is going very, very well, and you've sort of in the zone mentally, it makes things a lot easier," he said.
"You're not fighting both the machinery and the soil and mother nature. It's you sort of, quietly achieving really."
- RNZ