Four-Time World Champion Kristie Peterson and professional trainer William Ball share how all barrel horses, both futurity hopefuls and finished open horses can benefit from pole bending exercises.
Professional trainer William Ball was raised doing both pole bending and barrel racing. Both events were common at shows in the east, so horses often competed in each event. Now a professional, Ball looks at it as two events to earn money in one show.
“It does give me two events to run in. Everybody goes to horse shows because it’s fun to run,” he said. “A lot of times if you’re just running one event, there’s a lot of downtime. If you have two events to do you get to make two runs. I enjoy running both, it makes a show a little more fun.”
Ball won the 2024 Barrel Futurities of America World SuperStakes Slot Race on Red As Hale in November, a $100,000 payday for the trainer and now 4-year-old mare. Ball credits some of the mare’s success to her already competing in pole bending prior to her barrel racing debut in Guthrie.
“I flip flop pretty regularly back and forth but where I can run them in poles and can win money in poles, it’s really nice to take one to a local show and running poles and go ahead and win some money on them if they’re doing good enough,” he said. “I would say starting in the summer, I’m really starting to think about hauling them and stuff.”
At home, Ball goes back and forth between barrels and poles.
“One week I may do poles and another week I’ll do more barrels. Then they’re doing something a little different. It just gives them something to think about, something different,” Ball said.
Ball and “Miss Hale” won money in pole bending at larger shows in August and September prior to their win at the BFA, already adding to her earnings before she was eligible to compete in barrel racing.
“One thing that I really think about in poles is it’s a lot more forward momentum and not as much shoulder control, like a lot of people may think,” he added. “In the weave, I’m really wanting mine to move forward, so that translates for me to the barrels, they don’t anticipate as much. They don’t anticipate turning because I don’t want them to anticipate weaving these poles, because once they start anticipating weaving they start crossing early and that’s when you start knocking poles. So in the barrels, it’s kind of the same way I’m wanting that forward movement, I’m wanting them to really run up into those barrels, kind of like I’m wanting them to run by the poles.”
Find more videos from Kristie Peterson’s Training Barrel Horses series here.
