Highpoint Performance Horses
W Y M A N M EIN ZER
For 10 years, horses trained by
have won the world championship
in senior western riding.
By Larri Jo Starkey
T
the year is 1986 when a dark-headed
18-year-old pulls his Volkswagen up to a
remote barn in California, gets out and opens
the back door.
From the depths of the back seat, he produces
an old English saddle stained with dark sweat
marks that he loads onto one arm, an English
pad that he picks up with one hand, a bridle
that he fills the other hand with and then he
closes the door – a weathered beige – with one
elbow and a hip.
Several hundred miles downstate, a lean
18-year-old in cowboy boots is tossing a western
saddle over his 12th horse of the day in his job as
an assistant trainer to Doug Lilly. He has known
since he was 13 that he wanted to be a horse
trainer, and he’s tired, but avid. Today is another
day to learn something new about horses.
The two 18-year-olds have nothing in common
– except an unending desire to ride American
Quarter Horses and be the best.
Almost 30 years later, the two have a great
deal in common, including a winning streak at
the AQHA World Championship Show that has
never been equaled.
From 2005 until 2014, a horse ridden and
trained by AQHA Professional Horsemen Jason
Martin and Charlie Cole has won the world
championship in senior western riding.
Starting at the Bottom
the partnership that became highpoint
Performance Horses began out of practicality
when AQHA introduced split-combined shows.
“It used to be one judge all day long,” Jason
remembers. “(Later), in split-combined, shows
could have two judges on the grounds at the
same time, so they’d have one arena doing
English and one arena doing western.”
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Ima Petite Classic, aka “Kramer,”
is one of the horses that AQHA
Professional Horsemen Jason
Martin, left, and Charlie Cole have
ridden to a world championship in
senior western riding.
The Streak
Jason’s background was English; Charlie’s was western.
“Charlie had a hunter that he asked me to ride, and I would
help his English people and I would send him my western
people and he would help them through their classes,” Jason
says. “Then we started stabling next to each other, and 1992
is when we combined our businesses. I don’t know how many
horses we had. Maybe like three horses.”
Jason moved to Chino Hills, where Charlie was training, and
the fledgling partnership was up and running. They had few
horses – and the ones they had weren’t the best – but they had
a lot of time to ride and make those horses better.
“When you have nothing else to do all day and you spend
it riding one horse, you can get it pretty broke,” Jason says.
They never thought it wouldn’t all work out.
“We didn’t know any better,” Charlie says. “We didn’t have
nice horses, so we focused on trail and western riding. My first
trail horse that I won the nation on and was reserve world
champion on was a $3,500 horse. Jason did the same thing.”
The neophytes were also willing to start at the bottom.
“I had a little jar at the feed store collecting money to help
send me to the World Show when I went for the first time,”
Jason says. “We were sleeping in the horse trailer. My
customers and I would get a tack room and cots, and sleep in
the stall. We were just happy to be at a horse show. You
wouldn’t find any trainer doing that in our industry nowadays.
“I think that’s why it was so successful because as it kept
getting better and bigger, we were just grateful and couldn’t
believe it was happening.”
They dealt with some less-than-pleasant horses along the
way, including Jason’s first world champion in western
riding, Dun Some More.
“I got him for free,” Jason says. “I traded for him, and he
was mean. He would bite you.”
“ ‘Attack’ is a better word,” Charlie interjects.
“He would attack people,” Jason says. “John Briggs has a
scar, I think. Again, I was dumb and naïve and a nobody and
just doing my own little thing, and I don’t know what my
little thing was.”
But the horse started winning when no one thought he
could, and that set the standard for horses Jason and
Charlie trained.
At the time, western riding and trail were still seen in the
industry as lesser events for horses that couldn’t cut it in the
western pleasure and hunter under saddle classes of the day.
“We were fortunate to build up our business to where we
could buy some really nice pleasure horses and then do
western riding and trail on them and keep doing pleasure,”
Charlie says. “We also got a couple of top-quality hunter and
pleasure horses that were considered done, washed up.”
Jason and Charlie taught them new classes – jumping,
driving, western riding and trail – and those horses renewed
their viability as show horses, while the two trainers got a
reputation for being able to refresh old campaigners.
“All we were doing was giving them other jobs,” Charlie
explains. “They enjoyed their job, then pleasure or hunt seat
became the easy job. That’s always been our philosophy.”
Many people told them they were ruining nice horses, but
they forged ahead.
“What we found out is it made them better and gave them
longevity, because they were not just going around in circles
their whole lives,” Jason says. “We did western riding with
our hunters and we just found it made the horse better. When
we started, it was taboo. You didn’t cross over (between
western and English).”
Along Came Oscar
when world champion hunter under saddle horse
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Acadamosby Award came into their stable, Jason and Charlie
had ideas. Big ideas.
“Right off the bat, our goal was to go for Superhorse,”
Jason says. “We started jumping him and driving him.”
Even when outsiders tut-tutted, Charlie and Jason stayed
the course with “Oscar.”
“We knew that we weren’t going to ruin this horse,”
Charlie says. “We knew it in our hearts. We bought him in
December 1993, and Jason won trail on him at the first show
we went to in January 1994.”
In 2001, Acadamosby Award won
It wasn’t hard to keep going after that. They
his third Superhorse title under
both
believed in what they were doing.
Jason and Charlie’s guidance.
“We were young and dumb and just knew we
were going to be successful,” Jason says. “We
knew this was a great horse.”
At the World Show that year, Oscar was third in
junior working hunter, third in junior pleasure
driving, third in junior hunter under saddle and
fourth in junior hunter hack. A year after that, he
was the reserve Superhorse. By 1998, he was the
Superhorse, a feat he repeated in 2000 and 2001.
“That was a catalyst to our career,” Jason says.
“We got a lot of other horses, and no one
complained about us teaching them to jump or
drive. We already had Oscar, which was a proven
model. And we also had his longevity. He won his
first world championship as a 3-year-old, and the
last time I showed him in hunter hack at the
World Show at age 15, he won.”
Oscar could have kept competing, they say,
but these days he’s retired, watching over a
herd of brash yearlings at Highpoint in Pilot
Point, Texas.
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EXOTIC HOBBY
Moving to Texas
as jason and charlie built their partnership and became
better at training horses and coaching exhibitors, the awards
started piling up and they were creating a name for
themselves in California.
So they uprooted and moved to Texas.
It wasn’t quite that simple, of course. It was hard to leave
the land of lush foliage and comfortable surroundings for a
place that was – at the time – a desolate, grassless pasture.
“We were never going to be able to buy anything ourselves
in California,” Jason says. “The price of land was so expensive.
We were on Charlie’s mother’s property that was five acres. It
was over $1 million. Everywhere we went (for shows) was
days of driving. We wanted to be more centrally located.
Charlie liked Texas. He’d been here before.”
So they plopped down in Pilot Point, one of the first
training businesses to locate in an area that’s now a mecca for
horse trainers.
“Everybody tells us now they thought we were going to die
here,” Jason says. “It never crossed our minds we weren’t
going to be successful here. Now, when people say that, I can
see, ‘Why did we move here?’ We were already successful, we
were making money, we had good clients.”
Their clients, scattered around the country, stuck with
them, so they started building. In 2000, when they moved,
the property had two barns and 16 stalls. Today, there are 88
stalls, six barns, five assistants and 16 employees.
“Literally, we built 40 stalls and they were full,” Charlie says.
smaller tortoises, including endangered species like Madagascar
tortoises with their extravagant shells, which he hatches from eggs.
In a separate enclosure, a kangaroo named John Deer, his
girlfriend, Jane Doe, and some miniature horses share space, while in
yet another barn, Rosie the Camel, miniature cattle and some pet
prairie dogs stay warm.
“I’m a better horse trainer than I am a camel trainer,” Charlie
admits. “I trained Rosie to ride, but she lays down when she’s tired of
me riding her.”
The centerpiece, though, is Gerald, acquired after an extensive
search for just the right giraffe.
That, of course, was after Jason and Dan had built the perfect
light-filled giraffe habitat with advice from the Fort Worth, Texas, and
Dallas zoos.
Enter Gerald.
With a bang. Only a little over 9 feet
tall when he arrived, he now tops 12 feet
and is expected to grow to 18-20 feet.
He still bends his head down to politely
accept carrots from Charlie and Jason,
though, and enjoys greeting guests.
“We had no idea how perfect he would
be,” Charlie says.
Gerald would seem to complete the
menagerie, but Charlie says he’s not
done yet.
“We’re thinking about a girlfriend for
Gerald.”
W Y M A N M EI N Z ER
Everyone asks about Gerald first.
In addition to being known for producing high-quality horses,
Highpoint Performance Horses has become home to a large menagerie
of exotic animals, including Gerald the Giraffe.
Charlie Cole got his first tortoises in 1993, and Kermit the parrot
was acquired in 1994.
Like the growth of the business, no one expected the growth of the
mini-zoo and the beautiful buildings specially created to house them.
“Charlie likes the animals,” Jason Martin says. “I like to build their
enclosures. Charlie’s first turtle pen, he built it around a little tree and
it had chicken wire and then the next thing you know I built this
beautiful habitat.”
Jason’s partner, Dan, is fond of the waterfowl – about 15 different
species. Some of them have been purchased, but many of them are
freeloaders who have noticed there’s a
regular feeding schedule at the Highpoint
duck pond.
“We have 130 ducks out there, and Dan
will say, ‘There’s a redhead missing,
there’s a redhead missing,’ ” Jason says.
“I wouldn’t know if there were 40 of them
missing. I’m shocked they’re not named.”
The giant tortoises are named – Rocky,
Big Guy, Rosie, Theodore, Ike, Tina and
Isabel – which Charlie names off as they
stretch out their necks for gentle rubs.
Charlie has both the Aldabra and Galapagos
varieties of giant tortoises as well as
“So we waited a year and Jason said, ‘I’m going to build a
barn up here where the round pen is.’ ”
“So we put 20 stalls in the round pen,” Jason continues the
story. “They’re full. It’s the weirdest thing. Every time we
build stalls, they’re full.”
Western Riding
the key to their success has been the partnership, and
the key to the partnership has been honesty.
That’s especially true in western riding, where how a horse
looks might not correspond to what the rider is feeling.
“We have a lot of friends who are judges or trainers (in
partnerships), and I don’t care how bad it looks, the other
partner will say, ‘Oh, it looks great,’ ” Jason says. “That’s not
what makes you successful. What makes you successful is me
saying, ‘Charlie, I don’t care how it feels, it looks (bad).’ ”
It’s why they have mirrors in the riding arena – so they can
see what a performance looks like, not what it feels like.
“I’m not saying we never get offended,” Charlie says, “but
you have to have someone you trust and, most importantly,
who tells you the truth, no matter how painful.”
Though they’re both speed demons – Charlie likes barrel
racing and Jason comes from an eventing background – they
enjoy the technical aspects of western riding and started
making it a specialty.
“When we started, we were two gay young kids in this
industry that was really hard for us to win in,” Jason says. “We
had to be hands-down better than anybody else in the class.
THE AMERICAN QUARTER HORSE JOURNAL A U G U S T 2 0 1 5
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Western riding and trail were events where we could practice
and make ourselves that much better.”
When western riding started being scored instead of
judged, they really excelled.
“If a rider has a good lead change, the judges can’t overlook
it,” he says. “We break down every lead change. Every lead
change is separate to us. I think from 1995 until now, western
riding has evolved more than any other class.”
Charlie and Jason think of each class as a performance –
even though it’s scored.
“The performance is judged per maneuver,” Charlie says.
“We try to really work on the quality of our maneuvers and
our accuracy and trying to get every bit out of each lead
change. You’ve got to have a good mover and you have to
have accuracy and you have to have good quality. You have to
have all of that in western riding.”
The Streak
the first win of the streak was in 2005, when charlie
W YM A N M EI N Z ER
rode Majestic Scotch to the world championship in senior
western riding.
“That was my first win in western riding,” Charlie says.
“I’d been second a ton, so when the sweep started, that was
my first win.”
They had no idea it was about to become a habit.
“I remember at one point thinking, ‘This is good. This is
as good as we’ll ever be,’ ” Charlie says. “But you have to
maintain. It just kept elevating, so we try to do our best and
do what we do. We really don’t worry much about anyone
else. We just try to turn out a good product.”
Once they became aware of the streak, they didn’t want to
talk about it. They’re still a little reluctant to talk.
“I was always afraid to talk about it until we got 10,”
Charlie says. “I didn’t want to talk about the streak because I
thought that would end it.”
“I thought this story is going to end it,” Jason says. “Now
I’m fine if we get beat.”
The horses involved in that streak are all special to Jason
and Charlie, and each one brings up a string of good
memories from the first win with “Dickie” to Harley D Zip’s
final retirement ride, but it was consistency that made them
great. (See “The Horses” below.)
“(When we rode them), we weren’t just trying to get
through the pattern – it was how great can I get through the
pattern, trying to get every ounce of the pattern,” Jason says.
“When we are showing the World Show, after we finish the
pattern, on those horses, we’re thinking about trying to get a
plus half on the backup. We’re so confident on those horses,
it enables us and allows us to try to really squeak out these
extra points.
“The consistency is what made those horses great and that’s
what gave them the record.”
The horses in the streak also had good amateur and youth
riders who were successful with them and did much of the
work with the horses to prepare them for shows.
“I think it says a lot, because there aren’t a lot of events
where the best horse in the world isn’t just an open horse
In an office filled with world championship
trophies, Charlie and Jason take a moment to
enjoy their successes as they look to the future.
You can watch a video of Charlie and Jason
reflecting on their wins in the digital version of
the Journal, available free to subscribers.
THE HORSES
2005 – Majestic Scotch, 1994
sorrel gelding (One Scotch DelightTwo Eyed Natches by Two Eyed
Punk), owned by Sharnai Thompson,
Pilot Point, Texas
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KC MO NTGOMERY
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Since 2005, horses trained by Highpoint Performance Horses have been world champions in senior western riding.
Those world champions are:
2006-2009, 2011 – Harley D Zip,
a 1995 bay gelding (Maximum ZipMiss Faithfully by Captain Boss),
owned by Highview Ranch, Rapid City,
South Dakota
2 0 1 5 THE AMERICAN QUARTER HORSE JOURNAL
2010, 2012 – Vital Signs Are
Good, 2000 red roan mare
(Zippos Mr Good Bar-Vitalism by
An Awesome Mister), owned by
Karen and Joe Moran, Laguna
Hills, California
W YMAN MEIN ZE R
lightning-fast pace, and at Highpoint,
that future looks like speed horses.
“I bought my first barrel horse in
1997,” Charlie says,
They had already had success with
Rockette Ta Fame, the 2011 world
champion in senior barrel racing.
“We decided since we were standing
all these performance stallions for our
customers, we couldn’t really get a
performance stallion of our own,”
Charlie says. “So we bought two
embryos, one out of Firewater Fiesta
and one out of Sherry Cervi’s mare
‘Stingray,’ (MP Meter My Hay). At
the end of 2012, we were assuming
one would be a stud and we would
raise a stallion.
But at the World Show, Charlie saw
Slick By Design, that year’s world
champion in junior barrel racing, and
by the end of the year, he was in their
barn and they had the idea that he
could take them to the Wrangler
National Finals Rodeo with the right
jockey.
They found Michele McLeod, added
a few more barrel horses, and at the
2013 NFR, “Slick” ran the fastest time
ever recorded by a stallion at the NFR.
Then in the 2014 NFR in Las Vegas,
Michele won a round – the fastest time
of the year – on Jason and Charlie’s
mare Kellies Chick, aka “Skye.”
With some good mares like Skye
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JOURNAL FI LE PHOTO
the future always arrives with
2013 – Ima Petite Classic, a
1999 black gelding (Petite LordSheza Classic Kitty by Jolly Van
Bar), owned by Lee Reeve, Garden
City, Kansas
W Y M A N M EIN ZER
The Speed
of the Future
ridden by a professional,” Jason says.
“Charlie and I could literally pull up to
the World Show, have the horses
completely prepared by youth and
amateurs, and ride in and be successful
with those horses.”
In 2014, Highpoint had three finalists
to prepare, so there wasn’t much time to
think about the streak and its
significance. In the senior western
riding finals at the World Show, as the
finalists were called forward in reverse
order to claim their prizes, as they
waited on the wall in the Jim Norick
Coliseum in Oklahoma City, Jason and
Charlie found they did, after all, have
time to fret about their placings.
“I think at the World Show this last
year, my only goal was that one of us
won,” Charlie says.
When it came down to the top three
horses, all three of them were trained
by Highpoint, meaning the streak was
intact. By the time Jason was
announced as the world champion on
Jane Humes’ Dunit On The Range,
they realized they could finally talk
about the streak.
“I think 10 is just a great number to
have, and if we lose this year, I’m fine
with it,” Charlie adds. “We still have
great horses, and we’re still going to do
the same things. We’ve been in the top
three the last several years in a row, and
hopefully one of us will do it. But I
think that’s a good number. It’s a
milestone that probably will never be
done again.”
2014 – Dunit On The
Range, 2008 red roan gelding
(Openrange-Emerald Selection by
Selection So Simple), owned by
Jane Humes, Fort Dodge, Iowa
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45
Larri Jo Starkey is an editor for The American Quarter Horse
Journal. To comment, write to [email protected].
WYM A N M EI N Z ER
producing a few Slick foals, Jason and Charlie are hoping to
conquer the speed world eventually, but there are still a few
unmet show ring goals.
“I’d still like to win a world championship in junior
western riding,” Charlie says. “I’ve been second a lot. I always
get beaten by Jason. I still want to win, and there’s always
that desire to find that next great horse.”
Watching young horses develop and improve motivates them.
“We have really nice 3- and 4-year-olds this year, so there’s
that whole process of training them and teaching them trail and
taking them to the show pen and getting to the World Show
and winning a world championship – it drives you,” he says.
After as long as 27 years with some of their customers,
Jason sees their success as better than his own.
“I truly get more enjoyment out of my customers winning,
and every year there are customers who win who haven’t
before,” he says.
While they look to the future – maybe one with a lot of
speed in it – they’re still successful in the show ring, which
can bring about some jealousy, including nebulous whispered
accusations, but there are no shortcuts to success, they say.
“Maintaining at the top is really hard,” Charlie says.
“People want to tear you down or get to you. All I know to do
is to put my butt in the saddle and keep riding and not worry
about what the rest of the people are going to say. I always say
let your horse do the talking. So that’s what I do.”
The last three horses on the wall at the end of the
senior western riding finals at the 2014 AQHA
World Championship Show were all trained by
Highpoint Performance Horses. From left, Dunit
On The Range, Heavenly Mac with Jason aboard
and Ima Petite Classic with Charlie in the saddle.
L A RRI JO STARKEY