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 de ned 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 nal 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 nal.

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 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 di erence being it didn’t include having to stay at school to prepare him for the real world on the outside.

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 rst 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 rst Golden Shears Open shearing nal. Another brother, George Potae, won the big title in 1968. Joel’s grandmother, Vicky Maitland, won the Otago championships’ rst New Zealand Wool Handler of the Year nal.

His rst 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.

Joel Henare competing in the Open Wool Handling quarter nal in 2020.

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One of the party, Gina Nathan, won the Open wool handling nal, as was the case also in 2006. Joel missed the Junior nal by just one place, being beaten into the top four, he notes, by Elaine Robin, also from Gisborne and who died in a crash a few weeks later.

He stayed with friends he’d met in Alexandra, and it set the routine as he stayed most years with Nicole and Sparrow, on re ection a signi cant factor as he prepared for the toughest three days of the year, sometimes ghting for the Golden Shears Open title with people he worked with for the other 52 weeks.

“It’s just keeping on track,” he says, revealing it was his mum who kept pulling him up, even when he went through a phase hating competitions. When it comes to winning the Golden Shears Open, “you’ve got to be on the right frequency,” he says. Only once, he says, has he come o the board at the end of the nal con dent he’d won – in 2019, when he was retiring. In the last “couple” of wins, he’s had other things on his mind, like children – Keanu, 7, Hikurangi, 6, and Lee, 5, and their mum, Erica, a former lower grades wool handling champion, who now lives in Nelson.

If he missed a few days at school back in the day, it doesn’t show, his knowledge of the industry clear as he steps into the role of arena commentator at shows around the country. But really, it’s all about the big event in Masterton.

In 2017 it got him onto the cover of shearing’s Rolling Stone – Shearing Magazine. In 2021 it gets him onto the cover of the programme at the Golden Shears, and still he says: The Golden Shears is everything. It’s like going to the Grammies. It still takes my breath away, every time I walk into that hall.”

Career Highlights

FIRST WIN: Lumsden Lamb Shear 2005 FIRST OPEN WIN: Central Hawkes Bay 2006 TOTAL WINS: (to 8 February 2021) 118 Awarded Master Wool Handler by SSNZ 2014 REPRESENTATION: World Championships 2; Trans Tasman Tests 14 MAJOR SUCCESSES: World Champion Individual and Teams 2012, 2017 Golden Shears Champion 2013-2020 NZ Shearing Championships 2010, 2015-2017 NZ Wool Handler of the Year, Balclutha 2008-2012, 2015-2020 NZ Merino Championships, Alexandra 2012, 2014, 2018 NZ Spring Shears, Waimate 2014, 2016-2018 NZ Corriedale Championships, Christchurch 2013, 2015, 2016, 2018

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