Blades Champion

Press, Volume CVII, Issue 31530, 18 November 1967, Page 10

Blades Champion

r PHE winner of this year’s Caltex Golden Blades and New Zealand blade shearing championships, G. (George) Karaitiana, and his brother P. (Paul) Karaitiana, who was placed third, are members of a well-known family of five brothers who have made blade shearing their life for many years now.

Their father, Mr R. L. Karaitiana, who taught all the boys to shear, himself shore for 45 years.

George runs a gang of 10 top shearers and eight shed hands, which works throughout the South Island. Aged 33, he is skilled with the blades and has developed great strength in his arms and hands. He can. shear 306 sheep in an eight-hour day.

Besides winning a cash prize, Wool Board gold medal and the Caltex Golden Blades trophy, George is being given a free trip to the Royal Show in Auckland next week, where he will demonstrate blade shearing. The judges for this year’s competition held at the Christchurch show last week— Messrs W. J. Johnson (Ashburton), E. O. Carr and P. A. Carr (Waikari), M. V. Fronting (Mesopotamia), A. Reid (Rangiora), R. F. White

(Hororata), and W. Pickering (Seddon) —said that the standard had been very good indeed, particularly as the shearers had been handling big Merino wethers. They said that George Karaitiana’s performance was worthy of a New Zealand champion.

This is the first time that the championship has been won twice by the same man. George has been a consistent performer, also taking second, third and sixth places in previous contests. In 1961 he won the Australasian blade shearing championship at Masterton.

The emphasis is now on quality shearing. Last year a standard time was set to shear the four competition sheep in the heats and five in the final, and this was applied again this year. Instead of the fastest shearer gaining maximum points for time, any shearer who shore four sheep in the heats in 13min 40sec or under gained maximum points, and the time for the five sheep in the final was 17 minutes.

R. C. Perry, who was second to George Karaitiana, has been competing for the last seven years, and has been in every final, gaining second and third places twice.