Last week a man by the name of Ian Thomson messaged us on Facebook talking about orange Staminade.
Though orange was never a big seller overall for us and we discontinued the flavour from our range many years ago, according to Ian it was a favourite amongst shearers in his day.
Ian then put us on the trail of shearing record-breaker Dwayne Black and an article in Shearing World magazine online written by sports clinician Kerry McGawley from the University of Western Australia. As it turns out, shearing has been found to be one of the most gruelling activities on the planet.
On the 5th of April 2005, Dwayne Black spent 12 hours breaking the world sheep-shearing record in 30-degree heat over five sessions. Analysis on the first two-hour session (5 – 7am, 112 sheep) showed that Dwayne’s heart rate went up to an average of 158 beats per minute and his total fluid loss primarily from sweating was 5.5 litres. Even after he ingested 2.5 litres of fluids.
Shearer vs athlete
This compares with fluid losses of elite marathon runners during a comparable event. Yet Dwayne went on to complete four more sessions.
Read the article – Ms McGawley compares Dwayne’s performance not only to ultramarathon athletes but AFL players, soccer players, champion cyclists and alpine skiers.
And I bet he doesn’t earn quite as much…
Team Staminade
I often worked as a roustabout in our own shearing sheds at shearing time and Dad always said that shearers were some of the hardest workers about. You certainly wouldn't get many athletes doing what these guys did day in day out.