Shearing our success
The success of the 40th anniversary World Shearing and Woolhandling Championships in Invercargill has reaped organisers
and hosts two of the major honours at the New Zealand Events Association Awards.
During a gala event at Sky City Convention Centre in Auckland last night (October 11), the February 8-11championships
was named Best International Event, while the Invercargill’s ILT Stadium, a sports stadium which was turned into the
World’s biggest woolshed for a week and housed 4000 fans on the final night, was named Best Industry Supplier for an
Event.
Present for the awards were several of those who made the championships a success, including New Zealand Shearing
Foundation chairman and former World titles winner Tom Wilson, Shearing Sports New Zealand chairman and former multiple
World champion Sir David Fagan, and event manager and new SSNZ secretary Jude McNab.
The awards follow earlier successes for shearing championship winner John Kirkpatrick, who was named Hawke’s Bay
Sportsperson of the Year, and two at the Southland Sports Awards, where Kirkpatrick’s World teams champion partner,
Nathan Stratford, won the People’s Choice Award, and local organising committee head and farmer Mike Hogan was named
Administrator of the Year.
This week, woolhandling title winner Joel Henare was named a finalist in the Sportsman of the Year category at next
month’s Gisborne Tairawhiti’s Logans Sporting Excellence Awards, where he and teams title partner Maryanne Baty are up
for the Team of the Year Award.
The elated Mr Wilson said it had been an honour just to be named a finalist at the event awards, but the ultimate honour
rewarded all of those who had been involved, from hundreds of volunteers, to sponsors, to competitors.
Sir David said it was a big night for shearing as a sport and as an industry, rewarding not only those involved in
running the event, but those who had won the right for the event to be staged in the South Island for the first time,
and for Southland, its community leaders, and the community itself.
The awards were among 13 presented during the night.
ENDS