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You're listening to The Weeknd's sport podcast with Jason Pine from News Talks at B.
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New Zealand have won five of six titles at the Golden Shears world-sharing and wall-handling
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championships in Masterson, Roland Smith and Joel Henare among the stars. Now speaking of stars,
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what a delight to welcome into the studio on his way home after the psychonic event.
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Host of the country, Jamie McCoy, I feel like I should have rolled the red carpet out, Jamie,
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lovely to see you. Well, lovely to see you, Pony. You can't be at Wellington on a good day,
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and this is not a good day. It was beautifully fine and sunny when I left the wire wrapper.
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You know, maybe a good day will be along shortly. We can never count on it here in the capital.
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Golden Shears 2026 is all done. Tell us about some of the highlights and the success for the Kiwi
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Shears. Yeah, look, it was a great weekend for the Kiwi Shears and Wall Handlers. Of course,
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this year come and sighted with the world-sharing and wall-handling championships as well,
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and you honestly couldn't have scripted a better finish. Roland Smith's a bit of a friend of the
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country, the radio show that I run, doesn't rate as well as yours, Pony. I think it does.
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But a trimmer best, and it was so good. This is a guy who's effectively come out of retirement.
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Look, he's won eight Golden Shears titles. He's won one previous world title. These days,
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he likes diggers and tractors. He's got a big contracting business. He's running a farm.
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He was running a sharing gang, and he barely gets any time to get on the handpiece himself.
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He's just a magnificent athlete, and he was able to come back and win that world title last night.
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And that's what he was after. He had to go at the double. Obviously, the Golden Shears open title
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as well, but I think he just ran out of juice in the end, because he's not probably
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fit for competitive sharing, but he's just so good. His quality is so good. He was able to
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pick Toa Henderson, so it was fantastic. You know, those two guys won the world title on the Friday.
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Toa retained the Golden Shears open, as we said, and Roland won the World Championships. Joel
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NRA cleaning up in the wall-handling. Great weekend for the Kiwis. Absolutely, and it's still a massive
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event, isn't it? Mastered and just comes alive. I remember, my very first radio job was at
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Radio White at Upper in 1992 into 1993, and the Golden Shears was enormous then. Still the same now.
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Did you have a, like, a hot, jock, music voice back in those days, Pony?
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Well, I'm just in prime. I do remember that I had to MC the Golden Shears karaoke competition
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that year. Was there a karaoke competition last night, or across the weekend? No, there wasn't
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a karaoke competition, but interestingly, we could have done with one, because Rowena Duncan,
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well, you know Rowena, my former off-site, it was one of the MCs. They've got very good MCs and
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commentators there, but they had a bit of a balls up if I can use those words on your show Pony
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with the sheep. Someone mixed them up, and we had, like, a 40-minute wait before we could
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get on to the world machine-sharing title that Roland Smith eventually won.
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So, poor old Rowena and the other MCs were padding for time. They were wandering around the audience
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talking to all and Sundry Chippy was there with Kieran McAnulty Kieran. Obviously, he has a lot
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of big connection with the Golden Shears, a former bookie, so he's right on the money there.
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So we could have done with the karaoke competition to kill a bit of time. And of course,
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on the good old days, they had Miss Golden Shears. That's no longer politically correct.
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No, but I sort of feel as though if you're organising the Golden Shears, logistically, you make
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sure the sheep are right. Was it just an unfortunate mix-up? Well, someone's here to roll eventually.
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It was a bit of an unfortunate mix-up. They would call it a balls-up or a boxing-up the sheep
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and to use farming terms. But see, for that world-sharing title, the one that Roland won,
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they had three different types of sheep. So they had four pair-in-dales, six cross-bred long wall.
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That's a full fleece and then ten second-shear. The big, big two-tooth-yung sheep that
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are second-shear. So there's three different types of sheep and three different wall types.
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So yeah, someone left the gate open somewhere and anyhow, we got there in the end. It was a bit
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of a late finish, but it was a fairytale finish because Roland, this will be it for him. He was
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out there to get that world title. He got it. Now, Joel Heneray now has, I think, 12 or 13
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open titles in the wall handling at the Golden Shears. Rumor is that he's going to go hunting
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Sir David Fagan's 16 open titles in the machine-sharing to maybe be the greatest competitor
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at the Golden Shears. I don't think he will. We all do respect to Joel because David
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Sir David Fagan is an absolute legend. But no, look, what wonderful occasion, the
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warm memorial stadium, it's called the Heatswell and truly on, and it was on last night and
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we count down now three years, I think, and the world champs are going to be in Australia.
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The physical demands of sharing, Jamie, just give us an idea of just how tough it is on
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bodies to do this. Well, I know a wee bit about it, Piny, because in a past life I was like a farmer
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shareer. I did enough sharing to know, this is just too hard a job, you know? Like I could knock
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out 200 a day, these guys will do 600 a day, or some of the world records are 800 a day, that puts
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it sort of into perspective. But it is, they are super athletes, these guys, they not only share
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all day, they tell a Henderson's and these guys are training in the German all the time, they're
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super athletes, they say that a full day sharing, like a world record attempt is the equivalent of
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running two Olympic class marathons end on end. So it involves amazing fitness and amazing
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coordination. I mean, these guys, a lot of them would have been top sports people had they
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chosen to go down another field, they're just genetically better than the rest of us.
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Another great weekend, no doubt you'll cover it off on your supremely popular country show,
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you talk about ratings, most of us can only dream of the ratings that you pull on Jamie. So,
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look, I thank you very much for the boost. I haven't gone to studio with my face,
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plastered over it like you asked, did you get sick of looking at yourself? I doubt I'd do it,
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they need to change that screen, no, we've got a big tractor in our studio. I think I'd
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prefer one of those, yeah, rather than a screen with my face on it, Jamie, great to see you,
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mate, thanks for stopping in. Oh, thank you, Pony, great to be here. Jamie McIe,
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hear him on the country across the ZB network.