After marking 226 to lead the go-round, Boyd Rice marked the same score again on Center Ranch’s CR Sun Reys for a 4-point win in the Mercuria NCHA World Series of Cutting at the Houston Livestock Show & Rodeo Saturday. It was the first trip to the Mercuria finals for the 6-year-old mare by Dual Rey.

CR Sun Reys was bred by Oxbow Ranch out of Play Peek A Boon, an NCHA Futurity finalist and earner of more than $200,000. Oxbow Ranch also bred and owns the second-place horse in Houston’s Mercuria finals, Louellas Cat.

Rice, who won the National Reined Cowhorse Association’s World’s Greatest Horseman championship in Fort Worth a week earlier, has run up earnings of more than $180,000 on CR Sun Reys. The mare was third in last year’s NCHA Classic Challenge, and fourth in the 2012 Super Stakes. Rice’s daughter, Trea, won the Senior Youth Scholarship Cutting on the mare at last year’s NCHA Summer Spectacular.

Reserve champion Louellas Cat is a High Brow Cat x Louella Again mare shown by Lindy Burch.

In the Non-Pro finals, Mica Chartier took SL Jaybird over the $400,000 mark with a 224.5-point win. Like Rice, she also won the first round, with a 225.

SL Jaybird is a 12-year-old gelding by Smart Little Jerry out of Peyote Bird, bred by Renee Carter. Chartier won both the Non-Pro and Limited Non-Pro Super Stakes Classic on the gelding in 2008.

Kelsey Weeks and GS Counting On Kitty, by Im Countin Checks, finished second at Houston.