He isn’t cursing like the ringer in Click Go the Shears, but former gun shearer Stan Artridge is puzzled by the Australian Sports Commission. In a move as attractive as a flyblown sheep, Canberra has officially recognised baton twirling as a sport, but snubbed competitive shearing.
In a nation that still hitches a multibillion-dollar ride on the sheep’s back, I can already hear Sam Kekovich shouting: ‘‘It’s un-Australian.’’
Artridge, 78, is from Euroa, in Victoria, where Australia’s first documented shearing competition was held in 1885, according to Sports Shear Australia. He has spent most of his life competing in or judging shearing competitions. He is a life member of the Euroa Shearing Association, which helped establish the keenly contested Golden Shears World Championships, and grew up in a community that never doubted shearing competitions were anything but a sport. ‘‘What else can you call them?’’ he says. ‘‘People put a lot of effort into trying to win.’’
His son, Peter, is chairman of Sports Shear. ‘‘Generations of the top shearers I grew up with in Euroa would be pretty amazed [by the decision],’’ Peter says. ‘‘Shearing was their sport every weekend. They didn’t play cricket or golf, they went to shearing competitions.’’
Early this year, Sports Shear Australia applied to be recognised by the commission as a national sporting organisation – a status that can lead to taxpayer funding and access to the Australian Institute of Sport. There are many qualifying rules including that the organisation must oversee an activity that meets the commission’s definition of sport: ‘‘A human activity capable of achieving a result requiring physical exertion and/or physical skill which, by its nature and organisation, is competitive and is generally accepted as being a sport.’’
Even to the untrained eye, competitive shearing looks like a sport. It requires great skill and exertion, there are competitions all over the place and rules: ‘‘Two penalty strokes for not throwing the belly wool clear. The use of drugs, drips or oxygen is banned in all competitions. Judges must be tidily dressed, preferably wearing a white coat.’’
Sports shearing got me hooked in 2004, when I met Jim Murray, then teaching shearing at Dubbo TAFE. He believed the industry needed to attract and keep young people by building up competition shearing as a weekend spectator sport and making shearers see themselves as professional athletes. ‘‘In a two-hour run, a shearer will expend as much energy as an NRL player doing a full game,’’ Murray says. ‘‘And they do that four times a day, day after day after day. The mindset of people towards the industry has to change. They aren’t labourers. Shearers are elite athletes.’’
He introduced me to the Wellington shearer Hilton Barrett, who had broken the world record for eight-hour merino shearing, clipping 351 sheep in 1998 and breaking it again in 2001 with 411. As well as shearing for a living, Barrett watched his diet, ran up to five kilometres each morning to loosen up, lifted weights, got regular massages and watched videos of his rivals to pick up tips while running on a treadmill.
To watch Barrett shear is to witness endurance, speed, strength and skill; to see in a different form the grace of Evonne Goolagong Cawley (whose dad was a shearer). All this has been lost on the commission, which preferred to bestow NSO status on the Australian Baton Twirling Association. It joins other recognised organisations such as the Australian Bobsleigh and Skeleton Association, Darts Federation of Australia and Synchronized Swimming Australia.
Greg Nance, the commission’s sport performance and development director, says a gathering of shearers to compete against each other does not constitute a sport. ‘‘Shearing was primarily knocked back because it’s a trade. [Shearers] believe it’s a sport, but it’s essentially a vocation.’’
While he says baton twirling might seem a ‘‘novelty’’ to most Australians, it has ‘‘traditional sports pathways’’ from juniors to seniors and was ‘‘a strong and growing international sport’’.
Across the ditch, shearing has a different status. The New Zealand Government recognises the sport and supports it. A Kiwi shearing team has just completed an eight-Test tour of Britain. A New Zealand MP and former shearer, Parekura Horomia, farewelled the team for the 2005 shearing world championships with this message: ‘‘As shearing has slowly gained recognition as a sport, our shearers have now become the new elite athlete. It’s physically gruelling, technically intricate and intellectually demanding. Like rugby, it has a special place in our national psyche.’’
Peter Artridge hasn’t given up hope of using next year’s 125th anniversary of Australia’s first shearing competition to again seek recognition. In June, shearers from across the country gather at the and historic 72-stand shearing shed on Tuppal Station in southern NSW for a great weekend of sport. The good folk at the commission should make sure they have front-row seats.
Daniel Lewis is the Sydney Morning Herald’s chief of staff for sport.
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