When Slick By Design won the second round at the 2015 National Finals Rodeo with Michele McLeod, the stallion’s owners Charlie Cole and Jason Martin witnessed one of their dreams coming true.
“We can go home now totally happy was literally how Jason and I felt,” Cole says with a laugh. With the rounds paying $15,000, McLeod told them they were definitely staying. “We didn’t care about the money. We just wanted ‘Slick’ to win a round. The rest of the NFR was just cake for us!”
Cole and Martin are two of the most successful performance horse trainers in American Quarter Horse Association history. Just some of their most noted accomplishments include training the all-time leader of AQHA World Championship titles Acadamosby Award, the stallion with the most AQHA World Championships Hot Ones Only, the highest point earning horse in AQHA history Harley D Zip and four AQHA Superhorses.
They’ve built an empire at Highpoint Performance Horses in Pilot Point, Texas. Yet, stabled amongst Western and English performance horses reside some of the top barrel horses in the country.
“We have a lot of barrel horses,” Martin says with a chuckle. “We have four rodeo horses, two 4-year-old futurity horses, five 3-year-olds that are all in training, and I think I have eight babies coming this year. I have a couple of yearlings and three 2-year olds. We are in the barrel business now.
“It really just grew into something that we didn’t anticipate. Now we’re just trying to turn it more into a business to pay for itself, and it’s doing pretty well. This is still our hobby. When we’re at a barrel race or Calgary, it’s a vacation for us. It’s our hobby. Charlie’s always telling me this is supposed to be fun so he’s always making reality checks for me. It’s supposed to be fun and most of the time it is. Sometimes it’s not. The highs and lows are much more than I ever dreamed. ”
The First Wave
In the late 1990s, Cole was looking for another event to do completely for fun.
“I love horses and all aspects of them,” says Cole. “I thought about getting a reiner, but thought, ‘Nah, it’s a judged event. Everything I do is judged.’ I had a friend who had a barrel horse and he said I could run him.”
Cole was hooked. After starting out with a 4D horse, Cole was soon making a call to decorated AQHA barrel racer and pole bender Ross Carnahan to find a better barrel and pole horse. Cole says, “he got lucky right off the bat,” when he purchased a 4-yearold gelding named FQH A Sharp Move (“Boomer”).
“Right away I knew he was really good,” recalls Cole. “When I started running him around Texas, he was always in the 1D. I thought there’s no way that it could be this easy, this horse must be really good.”
Cole turned to one of his southern California friends, Kristen Weaver Brown, to see how good Boomer was. Brown, an accomplished horsewoman in the show arena and a NFR qualifier, took Boomer to his first professional rodeo and won. The following year, Boomer found himself in Charmayne James’ trailer. The world champion had leased Boomer and won her first ever Cheyenne Frontier Days Championship aboard the 5-year-old gelding. She also ran him in a round at the 2000 NFR.
That was their first taste of the excitement of owning a rodeo horse, says Martin.
“We were like, ‘Wow, this is really fun!’” Martin says. “I really enjoyed Charmayne, she was so professional to work with.”
Cole and Martin also owned Boomer’s full sister Rod’s Last Ladybug (“Boomette”), who won the 2004 AQHA Junior Barrel Racing World Championship with Brown and finished Reserve World Champion in the Senior Barrels a year later. They also bred Boomette to leading barrel horse sire Dash Ta Fame and got Rockette Ta Fame.
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