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GOLDEN SHEARS 2021
JOEL HENARE If one were to do a bit of conjecturing, Joel Henare might be looking towards a goal which could disappear at any time – to be the greatest Golden Shears champion of all time. Well, almost, for if it’s defined by the most Golden Shears wins in a row he is, as winner of the Open wool handling title in all eight years since 2013, in sight of the record of 12 by David Fagan in the Open shearing championship from 1990 to 2001 – even if it does get harder every year. He’s been in the Golden Shears Open final in all 14 years he’s been in the top grade. Third as a 14-year-old in 2007, 4th in 2008, and runner-up in 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2012, before embarking on his sequence of wins. In 14 seasons in the Open grade, he’s not once failed to qualify for the Golden Shears Open final.
Joel Henare competing in the Open Wool Handling quarter final in 2020.
person acclaimed by Shearing Sports New Zealand as either a Master Shearer or Master Wool handler, is remarkable in the annals of New Zealand Sport. In short it makes him the Jonah Lomu or Kane Williamson of shearing sports, the difference being it didn’t include having to stay at school to prepare him for the real world on the outside.
He’s won four World titles – only late idol Joanne Kumeroa won more – and his 14 Trans Tasman tests is a record in wool handling internationals. The fact is that at the age of 27 he’s achieved just about everything there is to achieve including retiring, which he more or less did two years ago, as short-lived as it was. The “retirement” came at the time of his 2019 Golden Shears win, the 100th Open of his career, which from winning the New Zealand Wool Handler of the Year in Balclutha at the age of 15, and becoming in 2014 easily the youngest
While Gisborne is home, school, in the sheep-chasing nature of the shearing industry, was the woolsheds of Central Otago, between what time was required in the classroom, mainly in Cromwell. By the time he had his first win in competition, aged 12, at Lumsden in January 2005, he was in tagging along with mum Greta already well-known in the industry and the
sport, with more aunties than he cared to count. His mum and the aunties have been the mentors, for sure, but the Golden Shears heritage goes right back to the start in 1961. His dad was a shearer, whose father’s brother, Mac Potae, was 4th in the first Golden Shears Open shearing final. Another brother, George Potae, won the big title in 1968. Joel’s grandmother, Vicky Maitland, won the Otago championships’ first New Zealand Wool Handler of the Year final. His first Golden Shears was an experience in itself, a 13-year-old piling into contractor Peter Lyon’s van for a venture of uncharted waters, a roadtrip north from Alexandra not knowing quite what to expect.
STIHL SHOP MASTERTON
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