22 Dec 2022

New shearing world record two days after previous record

From Checkpoint, 5:35 pm on 22 December 2022
King Country shearer, Jack Fagan, broke the solo World eight-hours strong wool lamb shearing record on 22 December, 2022.

King Country shearer, Jack Fagan, broke the solo World eight-hours strong wool lamb shearing record on 22 December, 2022. Photo: Twitch / Shearing Sports New Zealand

A Taihape teenager's shearing world record has already been beaten, just 48 hours after it was set.

On Tuesday, 19-year-old Reuben Alabaster got the title for the highest number of strong wool lambs shorn over eight hours.

He is also the youngest to shear the world record.

But on Thursday afternoon, Te Kuiti's Jack Fagan broke the same record. 

At Puketiti Station in the Waitomo District, a packed shed watched on as Fagan tirelessly shore 754 lambs over eight hours - eight more than Alabaster.

Sports reporter Clay Wilson, who watched the livestream of the event, told Checkpoint Fagan was already ahead of his rival by six before the final round.

"He's managed to finish really strongly. Watching it there, [he] was just really cracking on in those last 10 minutes and big cheers from the crowd.

"It works out to about 95 lambs every hour, and one shorn every 37 or 38 seconds."

"He did his 754, and the buzzer went and he did one more just for good measure."

Watching with the crowd was his dad, Sir David Fagan, who is a 16-time Golden Shears New Zealand Champion and held 10 world records.

"Also [it is] 30 years to the day, today, when his dad broke the nine-hour record in Southland in 1992, so a bit of a nice symmetry there for this new world record for Jack Fagan," Wilson said.