She's shear class!
The rise and rise of top-class female shearers is a growing phenomenon in NZ – especially during recent times.
Goss grew up on his family's sheep farm in Kimbolton, where he first picked up a handpiece at the age of eight.
Simon comes from an impressive shearing lineage: his father Alan was the 1985 Golden Shears intermediate champion and mother Veronica the 2008 Golden Shears open wool-handling champion.
"I thought the nine-hour ewe record is the pinnacle of shearing records there is for crossbred," Goss told Rural News when asked what inspired him to challenge the record.
"I didn't know if I was good enough to do it, but I felt like I could give it a good crack."
His team was no less impressive; family friend and current boss Rod Sutton held the same record Simon challenged for nine years between 2007 and 2016. Personal trainer Matt Luxton has, in addition to coaching other shearing trainees, also trained Iron Man contestants in England.
Goss had previously set an eight-hour two stand strong wool lamb record with Jamie Skiffington back in 2023, where Luxton had been his personal trainer.
Read More:
"[The last record] I probably didn't put enough work into his training, being young and naïve,” Goss recalls. "I had full body cramps for about 3 hours towards the back end of the day and that was something I never wanted to live through again."
As such, his preparation for this attempt focused on discipline and effective time management between work and training. In the six weeks leading up to the day, he received weekly massages for muscle tension.
"I was eating quite a bit but it was all clean foods, easier to digest so I could keep training hard and working during the week. Lots of chicken, rice and salmon; I stayed away from fizzies and chocolate, all the sugars I was eating was just fruit.
"That was a better way of doing it than last time, I felt a lot better during the day and I had more control of my body."
Despite his previous record and the effective training he had undergone, Simon still recalls being sick with nerves the day before the attempt.
"It was quite daunting; I thought, 'Far this is actually happening, I'm about to attempt one of the biggest goals I've set for myself thus far'."
Nevertheless, when Goss walked onto the board the next morning he felt comfortable, having ticked off as much as could be done for training and prep work.
After the first run, Goss was up two sheep on the previous record attempt.
“On the day, to be either on the same or above the previous guy, it’s a really good feeling because it does come to fine margins,” he said. “When you’ve got those two extra sheep, it’s a confidence booster leading to the second run.”
During the second run, a hurdle threatened to derail the attempt. The drip tray in the shed’s air conditioning unit filled up and turned off the cooling side of the system, regurgitating 32-degree air into the shed. While Simon’s team eventually noticed after half an hour and reset the system, Simon describes that time as being ‘slow roasted’.
“I was thinking ‘I don’t know if I can carry on,’ my body was cramping up. Once the system reset, the body cooled down naturally and we managed to settle back into it but losing that lead took its toll as coming into lunch I was the same as the previous guy.
“The energy levels were getting low, but I was lucky I had a good team around me who were able to keep lifting my spirits through the whole day. They had everything moving smoothly out the back, they were the key motivation to keep me up for that difficult last run.”
Eventually, at the eight hour, 59 minute and 20 second mark, Simon managed to beat the record - 732 vs 731.
A Family Effort
Even two weeks later, Simon Goss says the feeling still hasn’t fully set in.
“Looking at people’s messages over the last couple of weeks has been phenomenal, what we’ve achieved is essentially in our eyes the biggest record we could go at and to beat it by one.
“I could go on all day about who was helping out, on the day or leading into it. My father Alan and I have dreamed about this ever since I was young; my sisters have been someone to talk to about keeping my body right and over the last couple of years my partner Phoebe has been on top of everything, doing all my food and making sure all I had to do was work and train.”
Since his record-breaking attempt, Goss has been mostly occupied with helping his father out around the family farm before heading back to shearing contracting work as of publication.
As for the future, Goss says he does not know what is in store.
“Carry on with life, see how things go. If there’s an opportunity for another record I probably wouldn’t pass it up, but if not I’m happy with what was achieved.”
