AMATEUR POLE BENDING

TWO-PEAT!

BY CHRISTINE HAMILTON, FIELD EDITOR

Edwin Cameron and his 1992 chestnut gelding, The Money Merger, commanded a second AQHA world championship in amateur pole bending November 7, with a 19.719, the only time under 20 seconds. The pair won the senior poles world championship November 6.

They were last year’s reserve world champions in the same two classes. What’s their secret?

“Go as fast as you can and hope the poles stay up because everybody else is doing the same thing,” Cameron said with a smile. “You have to be lucky to be good and good to be lucky.

“It’s just the luck of the draw. You have to be good enough but, after that, it’s just a little bit lucky and everybody else has to back off a step really.”

But Cameron does know his horse. He purchased the former racehorse in 1998, and they’ve made a good pair. The Money Merger is by 1988 world champion running quarter horse Merganser and out of Good Money Gal by Jetaway Easy.

“He’s a little lazy, so you have to really push him,” Cameron said. “Other people have owned him and didn’t get the times because they didn’t push him as hard. That’s the bad side. The good side is he doesn’t get hot, and he doesn’t do stupid things.”

In the alleyway before their run ninth in the go, you could hear Cameron revving the gelding up, clucking to him while keeping him prancing in place. When he let the horse go, he ran hard and straight, with tight, clean turns and no mistakes.

Edwin Cameron of Tatamagouche, Nova Scotia and his 1992 chestnut gelding The Money Merger win a second pole bending championship at the 2005 World Show.

“He waits for you,” Cameron continued. “If you get behind, he’ll wait for you to catch up. If you try to run him into an end pole, he’ll do his best to avoid it.

“He’s not an arena record horse, but he’s a good average horse. If you’ve got to run 10 runs for the average, I’d pick him over any other horse on the planet. If you’ve got to run 10 runs and the best time of the 10 runs won, I wouldn’t pick him to be the winner.”

But The Money Merger was the best of 15 of the top pole benders in the Quarter Horse world tonight, including two former pole bending world champions, Dinkys Honor Bound and Obvious Color Doette.

Cameron and The Money Merger leave first thing in the morning for another show in Kentucky, on their way home to Tatamagouche, Nova Scotia.

And after that he said he’s going to give the horse a well-deserved rest.

Read about their 2005 world championship in senior pole bending at: http://www.aqha.com/showing/shows/worldshow/winningrun/srpoles.html