Which two-time NCHA Futurity Reserve Champion is back in the finals with two mounts in Sunday’s $4 million NCI Building Systems NCHA Futurity? Terry Riddle, 59, will be riding Spoonful Of Cheerios, a Hes A Peptospoonful x Make O Lena gelding, for Roger Anderson, plus his own mare, DMac Easter Bunny, by Young Gun out of Pretty Bo Bunny.

In 1976, Riddle marked 222.5 on the great sire-to-be Freckles Playboy to tie for the Reserve Championship at the Futurity with his brother-in-law, Bill Freeman on Doc’s Becky. Colonel Freckles won that year by half a point, ridden by Olan Hightower.

“I knew Playboy was different before I ever rode him,” Riddle said. “When I was driving and breaking him in the round pen, he’d just drop and turn around. That move was all natural, and that carried on into when I was working him.

“He was smart and willing, really a good-minded stud. He didn’t have any larceny to him. As a matter of fact, you couldn’t scold him much, because it would just scare him to death.”

In 1990, Riddle was back for a reserve title on Smart Play, behind Joe Suiter and Millie Montana. Riddle said that Smart Play was not a handsome horse, but he more than made up for it with ability drawn from his sire, Smart Little Lena, and dam, the Playboy mare A Lenaette.

“He was the ugly duckling in the yearling pen that year, but he looked a lot prettier when I put him behind a cow,” Riddle said. “He acts like he knows what the cows are going to do before they do it. His mama was a real hard-stopping, hard-moving kind of horse, but she was kind of hyper. She didn’t stop to think about everything like he does.”

Riddle sold Spoonful Of Cheerios to Roger Anderson of Hillsboro, North Dakota, in April. “He’s a thrill a minute,” Riddle said “If anything, he wants to overdo it. You don’t have to ask him anything.”