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TA L K
was especially moving for me. Adolfo is
as enamoured with her as I am,’ he said.
Meeker’s pioneering cloning enterprise
was initially met with a degree of skepticism
by some polo pony breeders, but has finally
been vindicated. B06’s performance is ‘proof
of concept,’ he says. ‘If they didn’t believe it
then, they do now.’
After the Tortugas Open final, Cambiaso
went on to achieve his long-held dream of
playing a high-goal match mounted solely
on clones – and at the most prestigious
tournament in the world, no less. Cambiaso
won the 2016 Argentine Open with La
Dolfina, playing B01 through to B06 (all
the Cuartetera clones are named beginning
with a B and are sequentially numbered
in order of their birth). It marked the first
time a player had competed in an entire
match only with clones.
B04, who made a significant contribution to
the victory, closely resembles B06, not just
in appearance but also in movement and
maneuverability. The two are nearly
impossible to distinguish on the field.
Yet for Meeker every clone bears its own
uniqueness. B04 has been his favourite since
her birth at his farm. She spent the first year
of her life with him there before she went to
Argentina to be prepared as a polo pony
through the organisation’s training protocol.
‘I spent a lot of time with B04 and was
very sad the day I shipped her to Argentina,
but I have kept up with her ever since,’ said
Meeker. ‘Something in me always said she
was special.’
But how can a clone, which is by
definition a replica of the original and its
siblings, be special? Meeker explains that
although all Cuartetera’s offspring share
the exact same DNA, the white markings
on cloned mammals are genetic only in
respect to their location on the body,
not the shape of the marking. White shapes
on the faces of clones, therefore, always turn
out differently as the genetic code merely
says ‘put white here’, without dictating
a specific design.
Unlike B06, who has a star, B04 has
a white crescent in the middle of her
forehead and a short white snip on the
bridge of her nose. The distinctive marking
on B04’s face spoke to Meeker from the very
beginning:‘It looks identical to the crescent
on the F of the Crestview Farm logo,’ explains
the normally objective scientist. ‘It seemed
to be a sign to me that somehow the grand
plan of the universe was just fine with what
we were doing [cloning]. I don’t often believe
in signs, but I took this as one nonetheless.’
Opposite
: Adolfo Cambiaso on B06 with
La Dolfina at the 2016 Argentine Open
final against Ellerstina.
This page, left:
Cambiaso on B06, BPP, at the Tortugas
Open final.
Below:
At the final of the US
Open, B09 was named BPP
