The premature elimination of world champions from the glamour shearing and woolhandling events at the Golden Shears in Masterton yesterday highlighted the pressure on the top stars to perform in front of the country's biggest shearing sports crowd.
The major upset came last night when Waipawa shearer Cam Ferguson disappeared in the Top 30 Shootout Open shearing quarterfinals, losing the chance to defend the title he won last year on the road to winning the world championship almost five months later.
Earlier in the day, Taihape schoolteacher Sheree Alabaster, who won a World teams title last year and was runner-up in her defence of the World individual title, found the Golden Shears Open woolhandling title still out of her reach when she also was eliminated in the quarterfinals.
The 27-year-old Ferguson bounced back from his demise, brought about mainly by the penalty for a significant cut to a sheep less than half-way through his eight-sheep shear, and led New Zealand to a comfortable win in a three-way international with Te Kuiti icon David Fagan, beating the British team of New Zealand-based Scottish shearer Gavin Mutch and Irish shearer Ian Montgomery, and the Wales team of Gareth Daniel and Wyn Jones.
Ferguson today also has last-day hopes in New Zealand's top multi-wools event, the PGG Wrightson National, and in a transtasman test which follows an away leg in October in which New Zealand beat Australia in Australia for the first time in eight years.
Alabaster, more than five months pregnant, is contesting the final of the North Island Open Circuit, which brought her her only previous individual triumph on the Masterton board in 2006.
The only other significant absentee from the open shearing semi-finals would be Invercargill shearer Nathan Stratford, the South Island's top hope of recent years. He missed the 12th and last place in by just 0.025 points, while Fagan, was down the list in 10th, chasing final appearance No 25 dating back to 1984 when he was runner-up to brother John.
Favourite John Kirkpatrick, of Napier, tightened his TAB odds even more with fastest time of 7min 15.2sec and best quality points in the five quarterfinal heats and qualified first almost three points clear of next-man-in and Far North shearer Rowland Smith, who had headed the 98-strong field in the heats earlier in the day.
The first four qualifiers for the semi-finals, with Dannevirke's Adam Brausch third and Smith's brother, Matthew, fourth, are all currently based in Hawke's Bay, while the Smiths, Brausch and fifth-placed Jason Win, of Reefton, were all aiming to repeat Ferguson's first step from 12 months earlier, getting into the final for the first time.
Win, now a semi-finalist five years in a row, was trying to become the first West Coast shearer to reach the final.
Former champions Paul Avery, of Stratford, and Dion King, of Hastings, also qualified.
The woolhandling semi-finalists, lining-up for their next stage this afternoon ahead of their final tonight, were headed by Gisborne teenager Joel Henare who with fifth-placed Ronnie Goss, of Kimbolton, last night took New Zealand led New Zealand to an 11th consecutive win over Australia.
Masterton's Sharni Graham, in her first Open-class event, was second-to-top qualifier and Alabaster's world champion teams partner, Keryn Herbert, of Te Awamutu, was third. Also among the qualifiers was reigning Golden Shears champion and former world champion Joanne Kumeroa, of Whanganui.
