When Andre Coelho watches a barrel race, he’s not just watching the clock. The Brazilian-born, Colorado-based trainer — the first from his country to win a top U.S. futurity — sees the same three mistakes show up at every level of the sport. The good news: all three are fixable before your next run.
Mistake No. 1: Skipping Steps
Coelho compares training a barrel horse to a kid moving through school. Most problems at a barrel race, he says, started months earlier at home.
“For me, to train a horse is a lot like kids at school,” Coelho says. “Like with kids if you skip some grades the kid is going to have some trouble. With horses, if you don’t go step by step then when you get to the show something that’s not right is going to happen. For me one of the most common problems I see at the barrel races is when people don’t spend the right kind of time on each step of the process with the horse.”
The fix: Don’t advance the horse until the current step is solid. The show pen exposes whatever the foundation is missing.
Mistake No. 2: Not Knowing When to Stop
The second mistake happens in the practice pen, and it comes from good intentions. Riders drill past the moment the horse gets it right.
“If I ask something of my horse and he gives me a good answer, I quit right there,” Coelho says. “I want him to go to his stall or his pen or whatever thinking about how [that ride] was a good deal for him. Sometimes the horse gives you the right answer and you keep trying, trying, trying until they get bored, and then the horse doesn’t want to try anymore.”
The fix: Reward the right answer by ending on it. A horse that quits on a win comes back wanting to try.
Mistake No. 3: Looking at the Barrel, Not the Line
The third mistake belongs to the rider’s body, starting with the eyes.
“Talking about rider issues, I think [the rider’s] body position is something that can cause a lot of trouble with horses, or people that don’t look at the spot they want to go to, they just look at the barrel,” Coelho says. “This makes the horse anticipate and sometimes crash barrels.”
The fix: Ride to the spot, not the barrel. Your eyes set your position, and your position tells the horse where you’re going.
About Andre Coelho
Andre Coelho, a native of Sao Paulo, Brazil, lives in Bennett, Colorado, with his wife, Renata, and two young daughters. He works as the resident trainer for Bill and Cheryl Kennedy’s Smoke Creek Quarter Horses. Coelho built a flourishing barrel horse training business in Brazil, where he became a dominant force in ABQM, the Brazilian equivalent of AQHA, before moving to the U.S. to test himself against the deepest competition in the sport. In 2019 he became the first Brazilian to win a top U.S. futurity, riding Smoke Creek’s Tiny’s Stormy Weather to the 5-States Futurity title.
Watch Andre work: he’s a featured coach on Ride TV’s BarrelRacing.com channel, with full training videos including his training philosophy series.