World shearing event an award winner
Invercargill’s World Shearing and Woolhandling Championships was the best international event in the country.
The competition hosting the best shearers in the world won two honours at the New Zealand Events Association Awards.
During a gala event at Sky City Convention Centre in Auckland on Thursday, the February 8-11 championships 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 shearing champion Tom Wilson, Shearing Sports New Zealand chairman and former multiple world champion Sir David Fagan, and event manager and new Shearing Sports NZ secretary Jude McNab.
The recognition follows earlier successes for shearing championship winner John Kirkpatrick, who was named Hawke’s Bay Sportsperson of the Year, and won two awards at the Southland Sports Awards. 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.
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.
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.
‘‘I’m speechless really. It was an honour just to be short-listed as a finalist but to win it is something else. I think it’s a real boost for our sport and industry. We’ve got amazing athletes who are incredible skilled at what they do and to open up the spectacle and drama of the sport to a whole new audience as we did in February makes all the hard work worthwhile,’’ he said.
Fagan 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.
ILT Stadium Southland General Manager Nigel Skelt believed it was a great night for Southland.
‘‘I think it really shows what’s possible down here. I remember our first chat with Tom and Jude about hosting the World Champs and we saw the potential but to be honest I had no idea what it would turn into.’’
‘‘It has certainly been one of the most successful events we have been a part of and I think it sends a great message to the country about the level of delivery and community support we can provide in Southland. I’m thrilled for the ILT Stadium team, who dared to dream and worked tirelessly over massive hours to pull off a world class event,’’ Skelt said.