Every sport has its World Championships. This includes sheep shearing. It's not the official world championships but the world's premier Shearing and Wool handling Championships that takes place in Masterton each year, in what is now called the Genesis Recreation Centre.
This event is famous throught NZ and if you are a sheep farmer outside of our waters, you have probably heard of it too. Because Masterton Masters actually swim at the same time as the championships are on, and because the championships began before we did, and because they exist literally next door to our pool, and because they are cuddly and cute, we adopted the wooly fella as our logo.
So the Masterton Masters swim club has piggy-backed the popularity of this event and dubbed themselves as 'Shear Magic' and used the sheep diving off a starting block as having the dual symbolism of shearing and swimming.
Yup - it's an unusual mix. But we have three national Masters record holders, world ranked Masters swimmers and a quadruple World Masters champion who also represents NZ as an elite swimmer.
So we don't care !
Have a look at the The Golden Shears official page. |
