Record-breaker Reflects The Morning After

The morning after was “surprisingly good” today for shearer Jack Fagan after one of his toughest days of all – breaking a World record that had stood for just two days.

Back home in Te Kuiti and reflecting on setting a new solo eight-hours strongwool lambshearing record of 754 about 50km down the road at Puketiti station, west of State Highway 3 township Piopio, on Thursday. Fagan said it was what he had trained for in the last nine months, even if it didn’t go all to plan.

Having shorn 191 in the first two hours from 7am-9am, he was assessing how he came to drop to 183 in the next run from 9.30am to the lunch-break at 11.30am.

The 30-year-old gun, a prolific winner of single-sheep speedshear events, including during the 2017 World Championships in Invercargill and the 2019 championships in France, bounced-back in style to do 190 in each of the Thursday-afternoon runs to beat the record of 746 shorn by 19-year-old Taihape shearer Reuben Alabaster near Ohakune on Tuesday.

Alabaster also stumbled in the two hours after morning-tea, during his successive runs of 188, 183, 187, and 188.

Fagan, also an ambassador for global shearing machinery giant Lister, puts the blip down to the way the body handles things – going from “0-to-100” from the start, with a heart-rate of 160-170 by morning tea, with just half-an-hour break before getting into it again. There had also been a need to change a comb during the run.

He said the short morning break is the challenge of the eight-hour record of four-two-hour runs, broken by the half-hour breaks for morning and afternoon tea and a lunch-hour, the result highlighted in most eight-hour record attempts, including that by Alabaster who was one of the first to congratulate Fagan at the end of the day.

Fagan says when it comes to records the half-hour morning break is not enough to relax before rehitting it, but it doesn’t matter so much in the daily grind in the woolshed, where it is the standard working day.

By comparison, the nine-hour day (also a standard but now less frequent working day), has an hour-long break (for breakfast) after the first two hours, followed by four runs of 1hr 45mins each.

The plan yesterday had been to “basically speedshear” all day, he said. After the blip late-morning he was still ahead of target at lunch-time and as confident of a better recovery and the big-shear in the afternoon.

Ultimately he averaged 38.196 seconds a lamb throughout the day, caught shorn and dispatched, and while he wasn’t intending being back at work in the woolshed until after the family Christmas break, he was considering competing in a speedshear in Taumarunui tonight.

The success of Fagan and Alabaster this week sparked conjecture that the two may eventually target the pinnacle of the nine-hour record, currently 872 and held by English shearer Stu Connor, and conjecture that that record will eventually go over 900, a tally which several have passed in non-record shears, without judges and the rules.

The pair each had four World Sheep Shearing Society judges watching over them, focused on making the shearers kept up to the quality standards required by the rules.

Fagan, who in a five-stand nine record a year ago shore 811 to beat the 810 father and shearing legend Sir David Fagan shore to set a record on December 22, 1992, in Southland, said he hadn’t thought much about a bid for the nine-hour record, but said: “Anyone who thinks 100 an hour is possible (in a record bid) just has never shorn in a record.”

He notes the eight-hour record has climbed by just 23 since Southern Hawke’s Bay shearer and farmer Justin Bell shore 731 on December 6, 2002. That was less than three weeks after eventual Golden Shears Open champion Dion King set a record of 695.

It had been almost 11 years since a record of 744 set by Irish shearer Ivan Scott near Taupo that Alabaster beat it by two on Tuesday, making the crucial record-breaking catch only in the last minute.

The next event in a flurry of post pandemic restrictions record activity will be on January 4 when Simon Goss (brother of women’s rugby star Sarah Hirini and son of two Golden Shears champions) will pair-up with Rotoruua gun Jamie Skiffington for an attempt on the two-stand lambs record for eight hours.

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