The record-setting shearers across the board from the stand one at left, Rose Lewis, Missy Te Whata, Te Atakura Crawford, and Pagan Rimene. Image – Melrose 4 Stand Women’s 8 Hr Lamb World Record, Facebook.

FOUR female New Zealand shearers have powered home to establish a world record of more than 1900 strong wool lambs in eight hours in a South Otago wool shed.

Starting the four-stand women’s eight hour strong wool lamb record attempt at 7.30am yesterday on a cold morning at Melrose Station, near Owaka, and finishing at 5.30pm, the four shearers were credited with a tally 1938 lambs.

The shearers — Rose Lewis, Missy Te Whata, Te Atakura Crawford, and Pagan Rimene — are all steeped in the heritage of multiple generations of shearing on the east coast of the North Island. Three of them averaging under a minute a lamb caught, shorn and out the porthole.

There was no previous record for the category in a register of more than 40 records recognised by the World Sheep Shearing Records Society.

But the trailblazers, all of whom have worked shearing internationally, collectively shore more in each two-hour run than the 473 shorn in the only two-hour run of a four-stand women’s nine hour record of 2066 shorn at Waihi Pukawa Station, near the shores of Lake Taupo in the Central North Island, in January 2020.

Te Atakura Crawford, from Gisborne, and who in 2013 beat an otherwise all-male field to win the New Zealand Merino Shears Senior title, topped the tallies with 530, at 54.34 seconds a lamb, caught, shorn and through the porthole.

Ariana (Missy) Te Whata, who grew-up around Mossburn in Southland and is the niece of two world record holders, was credited with 504, master wool handler and 2019 world teams wool handling champion Pagan Rimene, of Alexandra, and daughter of former world record holder Dion Morrell and world champion wool handler Tina Rimene, shore 481. The other 423 were accredited to grandmother Rose Lewis, from Manutuke on the east coast, and whose father and two brothers featured in a 10-stand record on the east coast in 1976.

Injury overcome

In 2008, Rimene broke her back in a van crash, once saying a specialist had told her the strength of her back from shearing enabled her dramatic recovery.

Increasing the pace all day, the four shore 475 in the first two hours to morning tea, 479 in the next run to lunch, and 492 in each of the runs after lunch, during which sunshine appeared outside for the first time with about  an hour to go.

Dion Morrell, who was in his daughter’s pen for much of the day, said the lambs were “a bit average in condition” after recent cold weather, and had grown a lot of wool in recent weeks, as highlighted in a sample shear of 20 lambs on Monday averaged 1.228kg of wool per lamb, well over the minimum of 0.9k required for the seven referees to allow the attempt to go ahead.

“The lambs determine what you can shear, they were not as easy as some might think,” he said.

“My God, the girls showed some grit,” he said, highlighting the moment when all four made their last catches of the day with just seconds remaining on the clock, effectively adding four last lambs to the total as the number soared above the 1900 forecast early in the day and left behind the 1930 being projected early in the third run.

“The whole place lit up,” he said.

A crew of more than 20 support workers worked throughout the day in and around the shearing board and pens, with at least as many others also involved in other ways, in an another display of the shearing industry’s fraternal support that was highlighted by a livestream commentator from the wool shed, that otherwise had no cellphone coverage to the outside world.

The event was headed-up Scott Cameron, of Southern Wide Shearing, and the referees were convenor Mark Buscomb, from Australia, and New Zealand officials Neil Fagan, Bart Hadfield, Ronnie King, Alistair Emslie, Johnny Fraser, and Donald Johnston.

It was the first of two multi-stand shearing record attempts in the southern regions this summer.

On January 31, Shane Ratima, Paerata Abraham and Leon Samuels will tackle the three-stand, eight-hours strongwool lambs record at Waihelo Station, Moa Flat, West Otago.

The current record of 1976 was set by Coel L’Huillier, Kaleb Foote and Daniel Langlands in 2019 at Puketiti Station, near Piopio.