New Zealand Federated Farmers asks for sheep shearing to become Olympic sport
A farm lobby in New Zealand has said that sheep shearing should become an Olympic sport. The statement was given by the New Zealand Federated Farmers.
New Zealand has not made the suggestion half-heartedly as it supports national shearing championships. The highest level of the championship is known by the name of the Golden Shearers. The Golden Shearers is the national championship that inculcates some
of the best shearers not only in New Zealand but also in the world.
New Zealand is not the only country that actively features shearing championships. The other countries that popularly hold shearing as a sport include Ireland as well as Australia.
Jeanette Maxwell from the Federated Farmers has made the following comments on the matter of shearing receiving international recognition, “Our World Championship teams are athletes who take it to another level. Surely, time has come to elevate shearing's
sporting status to the ultimate world stage. One way would be to make shearing a demonstration sport at a Commonwealth Games, if not, the Olympics itself.”
Despite the fact that the New Zealand farmers’ Federation is being vocal about their stance, there is not much of a chance that the sport of shearing might make it to any of the future Olympic Games. This is because of the fact that a complex procedure is
involved in the selection of any sport to become part of the Olympic Games.
For one, any sport needs to be entered into any given Olympics event before six years of its commencement. Not only that, the sport has to be played by both female as well as male members of the participating country. In case the number of countries which
have participated in the sport are not of a significant number, the sport automatically gets pulled off from the Olympic Games schedule.
A recent example includes both the sports of baseball as well as softball which did not make it to the 2012 London Olympic Games neither to the one being staged in the year 2016. The reason for this was that both the sports are not played by enough countries
in the world.
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