The Shearing Contest

Text 1: Llanfair Show, by Dmitri Holloway

An original short story extract.

There were two stands in the shearing tent at Llanfair Show, and the whole valley had crammed in to watch them. On the left, old Gethin Price, eleven times champion, sixty-three years old, moved like a man folding laundry: unhurried, exact, wasting nothing. On the right, Kezia Lloyd, nineteen and fearless, moved like a firework.

She flipped her first ewe onto its rump in one heave and went at it with the clippers howling, fleece peeling away in fat creamy slabs, her ponytail whipping, the crowd whooping at every stroke. She was through her first sheep before Gethin had finished his belly wool. The young lads by the tent pole began to chant her name.

Gethin did not look up. His blade slid along the ewe’s flank in long, smooth sweeps, each one overlapping the last, and the fleece came off whole, like a coat lifted from a sleeping child. His sheep lay calm against his knees. Hers kicked. By the fourth animal she had nicked one, a thin red line on the white skin, and the judges’ pencils moved. Gethin finished his fifth sheep, switched off his clippers and straightened slowly, with a small wince. Then, for the first time all afternoon, he looked across at her, and nodded, and smiled.

How does Dmitri Holloway use language and structure to show the contrast between the two shearers?

You should use relevant subject terminology to support your answer.