People gathered to enjoy the Rural Games this weekend to watch competitors go head-to-head in tests of skill, encompassing everything from fencing to shearing.
Pictured
in Rathkeale’s moment of victory were (from left) Shearing
Sports New Zealand chairman and shearing legend Sir David
Fagan, shearers Charlie Heard, Michael Buick, Sam Mathewson,
and Sam Loder, woolhandler Liam Quirke, and 2014 World
champion and seven-times Golden Shears Open winniner Rowland
Smith. Photo / NZ Rural
Games
Rathkeale College claims
schools shearing title
Wairarapa boys school Rathkeale
College has been rewarded for a possible World-first by
winning the first New Zealand Rural Games Secondary Schools
Shearing Championship in Palmerston North.
The school
north of Masterton, the heart of Golden Shears country,
recently made shearing one of the core sports of its
Paul Evans from Whanganui with his trusty dog Trump. He said they estimated 42,000 people attended the games over three days, with a peak mass of 18,000 at any one time. Hollander said he was proud the event had raised the $1.2 million needed to go ahead with no entry fees. “That’s a big plus, that there is no barrier to bringing as many kids along.” He said 420 teenagers turned out for the Agri Futures careers day, with 240 participating in the Clash of the Colleges.
DAVID UNWIN/Stuff
Gale Wilson-Green, 7, has a go on a miniature digger. “Those kids are the future. It’s exciting to think that we have got a day and a half of competitions aimed a secondary school youth.”
Travelling Jack claims second
Rural Games speed shear title
All roads, or what
seemed to be just about all of them, were paved with gold
for Te Kuiti shearer Jack Fagan as he today became the first
to win two New Zealand Rural Games Speed Shear
titles.
Successfully defending the title he won last
year, it was Fagan’s second speed shear win in a rugged
travel schedule which took him on a flight from Hamilton to
Christchurch a 110km drive from Christchurch to the Mayfield
A and P Show, and the 142km from Mayfield to Sefton on
Saturday, and the next morning the drive from Sefton to