Southland’s Leon Samuels wins another final
Southland shearer Leon Samuels has retained his national lambs shearing title – but it was close.
A winning margin of just 0.062 points has enabled Samuels to retain his New Zealand Lamb Shearing Championships title and extend an unprecedented sequence of major event triumphs in the last 12 months.
The defending champion’s win came on Monday at the Mackenzie A and P Show in Fairlie, where now Roxburgh-based Samuels finished a 20-lamb final 37 seconds clear of next-man-off and South Islandbased English shearer Alex Clapham.
But the big threat came from Pleasant Point contractor Ant Frew, who had markedly the best quality points and went within two seconds of claiming the biggest win of his career.
It was the sixth win of a standout season for Samuels.
He was the simultaneous holder of six national titles across four wool types, including second-shear events the Golden Shears and New Zealand Shears Open titles in the North Island, and the Otago Shears and Southern Shears Open titles in the south, the New Zealand Merino Shears (finewool), New Zealand Spring Shears (long wool), and the lambs title won in both 2023 and 2024.
Originally from Mangakino in the central North Island, but long based in Invercargill, he’d had a big five years, with wins in the 2021 National Shearing Circuit and New Zealand Shears Circuit finals, and achieving history-making triumphs in the 2023 New Zealand Shears Open final and this year’s Golden Shears Open final.
Back in March, Samuels became the first South Islander to win the Golden Shears Open shearing title in 35 years, in a dramatic six-man final of 20 sheep each in Masterton, where he beat Riverton shearer Casey Bailey, in what had been a dominant past month.
Meanwhile, at the New Zealand Shearing Championships held in Te Kuiti, Samuels finished third in the open shears final, while Nathan Stratford was fifth.
In the New Zealand circuit shears final, Samuels was also third.
Mataura’s Brett Roberts took out the open plate final and placed fourth in the speed shear final, while in the senior shears, Nathan Bee was second, and in the intermediate division, Emma Martin finished third.
Jet Schimanski placed third in the junior shears. Saskia Tuhakaraina was fourth in the senior wool handling final.