![]() Meanwhile it was also a big day on Saturday for record-breaking shearer Stacey Te Huia, from the North Island but based in Central Otago now for five years, partly to realise the dream of New Zealand transtasman team selection, which he finally achieved as best Kiwi in the Shears’ Open shearing final. She and Paerata will be back in the South Island later in the week for the Waimate Spring Shears on Friday and Saturday, and they expect to both me in Australia – with Paerata in support, just as she was when he was in the team three years ago.įor Cushla it will be the start of a chase for the ultimate goal this season, to win a place in the New Zealand team for the 2023 World Championships in Scotland. It was as a shearer that Abraham, in pre-married days as Cushla Gordon, first came to light, as winner of the Golden Shears Novice shearing final in 2008, a title also won by brothers David (in 2010) and Adam (2019), while third brother Joseph has also been a multiple winner in the lower shearing grades. She hadn’t reached an Alexandra final since, and she’d had just two Open-class wins, at the Rangitikei Shearing Sports in Marton in February 2015 and at her home Wairarapa A and P Show at Clareville, Carterton, in October 2016, since when she’d contested just four finals despite being at almost every competition, also live-streaming events with family operation Shedtalk. The runner-up was four-times winner and 2019 World teams champion Pagan Rimene, of Alexandra, third was 2013 winner Amy Ferguson, of Alexandra, and fourth was four-times winner, 20 World champion and Gisborne woolhandler Joel Henare, to whom she had been runner-up, while pregnant with her first child, in her first season of Open woolhandling in 2012. Thus, Abraham dominated throughout to be top qualifier among the 27 woolhandlers in the heats on Friday and repeated the form through the semifinals to Saturday’s final, in which she beat the only three other competitors to have won the Shearing Sports New Zealand season’s opening major title in the last decade. “I’m fitter now than I was when I was 20,” she said. ![]() “It’s changed my life,” she said the morning after the win as the couple prepared to fly home to Masterton to see the children they hadn’t seen for two months while “down south” working, mainly on merinos, for Alexandra contractors Peter and Elsie Lyon. ![]() It was a determined and consummate triumph from the 33-year-old mum-of-two who had undergone weight-loss surgery to shed 44kg in the last year and overcome diabetes, issues that had started to control her life since the birth of her first child 10 years ago, and was quite happy to talk about it. ![]() The black shirt marks a unique double, emulating husband and shearing contracting business partner Paerata Abraham who shore in the last two pre-Covid tests after winning the 2019 PGG Wrightson National Shearing Circuit. The dominating performance, spearheaded by exceptional fleece quality points in the final, won her a place in the New Zealand team for the post-Covid resumption of transtasman tests in Bendigo, Vic., on October 21. Masterton woolhandler Cushla Abraham brought both form and a major surprise to Central Otago town Alexandra as she won the New Zealand Merino Championships Open woolhandling title. Pictured: Daniel McIntyre, New Zealand Mernio Championships Open shearing champion, and Cushla Abraham, New Zealand Merino Championships Open woolhandling champion.
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