TR Dual Shine and Nicolas Barthelemy

Need a little geography lesson? I did. New Caledonia is part of the French Republic and is located in the subregion of Melanesia in the southwest Pacific Ocean, northeast of Australia. It was first sighted by British explorer James Cook in 1774 and annexed by the French in 1854. The country consists of one mountainous main island, which is an elongated 220 miles long and only around 40 miles wide, with several smaller islands surrounding it. The population in 2009 was estimated at 249,000. The capital is Nouméa, and the currency is the CFP franc.

Now let’s catch a 6,500-mile flight from New Caledonia back to California, USA. Nicolas Barthelemy had $4,385 in Equi-Stat earnings prior to the 2011 National Stock Horse Association Futurity. During the opening days of the NSHA Futurity and inaugural Derby in Paso Robles, Calif., Barthelemy burst onto the scene by leading the Derby Open, Intermediate Open and Limited Open aboard Jans Rey Cuatro, owned by Sheri Jamieson, of Jamieson Performance Horses in La Jolla, Calif., with a high-score 224 in the herd work. Barthelemy and the 5-year-old stallion (Dual Rey x Haidas Jan x Haidas Little Pep) finished up capturing Reserve in the Derby Limited Open.

In the Futurity Open, Barthelemy showed three more of Jamieson’s horses – TR Dual Shine, Little Hickory Bet and Jamminalena. Barthelemy ended up capturing the Limited Open Co-Reserve Championship in that event with 3-year-old gelding TR Dual Shine (TR Dual Rey x Miss N Shine x Shining Spark).

This wasn’t Barthelemy’s first trip to the NSHA Futurity, but he feels that he has matured and now knows more about how to put together a winning run.

“You have to organize yourself. You have to plan and endure the pressure. Chill out, you know,” Barthelemy said laughing. “It’s exciting. It’s the best thing in the world. All the guys are so friendly and willing to help. The spirit is so good. You just want to keep coming back and go home and ride hard so you can come back and ride with them. You earn the right to be there.”

The mentor
Barthelemy and Mathieu, 65, reside in Descanso, Calif., and train horses for Jamieson Performance Horses. Mathieu’s last recorded Equi-Stat earnings were for a reining in 2009, but Mathieu did compete and earn money at reined cow horse events. He said he made the move to reined cow horse after Todd Crawford and Don Murphy told him to give it a try.

Unfortunately, Mathieu, originally from Quebec, Canada, was diagnosed in April of this year with Lou Gehrig’s disease, a disorder also known as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). He is now in a wheelchair and has difficulty breathing.

Nicolas Barthelemy

“I’m going to make you laugh, but being 64 last year, I thought this is the way older people feel, and I was just pushing myself to continue. I had never felt that way before, and because I didn’t have pain, I was just getting weaker and weaker, I figured it was just old age,” Mathieu said laughing.

Mathieu is good-spirited and still attends shows. In fact, he was at the NSHA Futurity to support his young protégé, and he said watching Barthelemy perform so well “gave me goosebumps.”

“He did so well in the herd work,” Mathieu said proudly. “And I was the one who taught him the best I could because I started to really cut only last year.”

The natural
Mathieu and Barthelemy first met about seven years ago. Mathieu was contacted by the horse association in New Caledonia to give reining clinics, and a young Barthelemy made quite an impression on the veteran horseman.

“They contacted me because I am French-speaking and asked me to come over, and he [Barthelemy] was the one who popped out,” Mathieu said. “He was the best hand. He was really attentive to everything, was there from the morning to the evening. He had it in the guts.”

So Barthelemy was invited to California to spend a month with Mathieu at his ranch, which he did, then returned home. A year and a half later, Barthelemy returned to California with the intention of staying just six months. He never left.

“I came here about 5 1/2 years ago to work with Yvon Mathieu, and I just stayed,” Bathelemy said with a thick French accent. “He [Mathieu] found me over there and brought me here. I’ve been really lucky to find him, and he’s been really, really good to me. He’s put me on real good horses, and I’m just really blessed.

“Over there, I was doing a bit of everything,” he said. “Whatever the horse was capable of doing. I was running after cows in the pastures; we had backyard races. I’ve been around horses since I was very young. My father was in racehorses. I’ve been doing what we’re doing now since I met Yvon, about seven years. Everything I learned about cow horse was from Yvon.”

Barthelemy wasn’t exactly chasing cows down the fence in New Caledonia, but Mathieu said that Barthelemy was eager to learn and had an aptitude for horsemanship, with good hands and a natural feeling for it.

“He had good potential,” Mathieu said of Barthelemy. “He listened like a sponge. He tried really hard and was riding family horses. He was the one after the five days [of the clinic] who showed the most change and was trying very hard. He doesn’t give up.”