This was Trent Pedersen’s first World Show, but it wasn’t Please Nicker’s.
The 5-year-old bay gelding made his World Show debut in August at the Ford AQHYA World Championship Show with Samantha Bayer riding him in the reining finals to a sixth-place finish.
So the pressure was on for Trent to do at least as well with “Nick.”
“I was really proud of Sammie, and I was just hoping I could make it a little bit better,” the Oregon horse trainer.
Trent and Nicker just made it back to the junior reining finals. They marked a 215 in the preliminaries, which was the bottom score for being called back to the finals.
Thirteenth in the draw of 18, Trent and Nicker entered the arena for the first sliding stop in reining pattern No. 10.
“When we ran into the arena, he ran down pretty strong and pretty true, and then he dragged his butt,” Trent recalled. “From then, he waited on me.”
Trent moved Nick into his spins in each direction and then asked him to move off into his first fast circle.
“When we got done with our circles, we went for our first stop,” he said. “After that first stop, he run true all the way down there, so I knew the rest of it was just ride him hard, and it was up to me to get him through it all. So luckily, it turned out.”
Trent knew Nick had done a good job, but he had no idea how the judges would mark him. When the score of 224 was announced, Trent was pleasantly surprised.
“I knew it would be all right but I didn’t know it would be that big,” he said. “I was just fortunate. That’s the way it felt.”
There were still five more riders, including the 2006 National Reining Horse Association Futurity champion rider Randy Paul and the 2006 National Reined Cow Horse Association Snaffle Bit Futurity champions Todd Crawford and Smart Crackin Chic. But Todd marked a 213, and Randy’s score of 223.5 was just a half point shy of the world championship.
Trent had won his first world championship at his first World Show.
“I can’t tell you how it feels,” Trent said. “It hasn’t sunk in yet.”
But Trent gives a lot of the credit for the win to Nick.
“He’s a cool little horse,” he said. “You just have to let him be who he is and go with what he’s giving you. But you know he’s going to give you 110 percent. He’s very honest and pretty easy to show. He’s a pretty special individual.”
