Ted Turner and My Finishing Touch Give Elyse Nichols Merck a Belated Wedding Present With a Win 3-Year-Old Geldings

By: Brittany Bevis

Ted Turner was at the lead for Elyse Nichols Merck this afternoon to claim the World Championship title with My Finishing Touch in 3-Year-Old Geldings at the 2013 AQHA World Show. “Snowball” is a bay gelding by Mr. Elusive and out of Tributes Impression.

Snowball is very special to the Nichols family, because they bred and raised both he and his mother, who has since passed away.

“We raised his mother, and we raised him,” Elyse Nichols-Merck says. “He was born at our house. Two weeks after he was weaned, his mother was killed by lightning, so he is super special to us. We’ve shown him for two years and have been Reserve three times and won it twice now. We won Youth World with him, and we were Reserve in Amateur and Open last year. We were Reserve at the Select World,  I was fourth last week, and we just won today.”

Turner has been in charge of fitting Snowball since the very beginning of his show career. Merck has been showing halter horses for the past 17 years, and Mr. Elusive is one of her favorite bloodlines. Although there is no longer a possibility of raising a full sibling to Snowball, a half-sibling would do just fine.

“We love Mr. Elusive,” she says. “We’ve had several by him, and I’ve shown a lot by him.”

“Snowball showed really, really good today. He stood still the whole time. He looked great, and he had his ears up the whole time. We hope to keep showing him. He’s only three, so we hope to show him for a few more years.”

This afternoon’s win was particularly special because Elyse Nichols became Elyse Nichols Merck one month ago today.

“I just got married a month ago today, so it was four Saturdays ago on October 26th,” she says. “The other day, I said two weeks, and I made him mad! This was an awesome wedding present.”

3-Year-Old Geldings–

1-My Finishing Touch/Ted Turner

2-Vincenzo Zini/Mitch Leonarski

3-Boys N Toys/Ross Roark

4-Indefinable/Ronald Stratton

5-Doinmythang/Chris Arentsen

6-LWR Touchdown/Denny Hassett

7-Bottoms Up/Matthew Alexander