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NICOLAS BETRAN DE BALANDA
“A lot of people tried to make me wait, they thought it was too soon for me to start. Now they think I did the right thing.” Four years after setting out as a trainer, Nicolas Bertran de Balanda is only 28 years old. Although yet to reach the heights of his profession, the handler has made a determined and promising start to his career, winning a total of 132 races und er both codes including 39 during the last season. Despite an early start to his career, the former amateur rider knows how to take his time and rather than leap in at the deep end with the Parisian circuit, de Balanda took the less glamourous option, launching his career far from the capital to take advantages of the provincial programme and its lower costs.
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ICOLAS Bertran de Balanda has a lot to live up to. His father Jehan has been a regular in the top ten of the French jumps trainers’ table for two decades, topping the list in 1997 with 79 wins from 78 individual horses. His uncle Gilles recently came to the end of his contract as trainer of France’s national show-jumping team and was himself twice a member of the nation’s victorious world championship team. “My father’s family were all involved in horses,” explains Nicolas, “and my paternal grandfather Marc Bertran de Balanda was quite a figure in the show-jumping world. He had a big reputation and trained a lot of young riders at national and international level.” Looking further back, his great-grandfather Pierre de Balanda was a show-jumping silver medallist at the Amsterdam Olympics in 1928. For the young Nicolas Bertran de Balanda, the coloured poles and meticulously measured strides of the sport were a useful distraction but they never vied with the attractions of racing. “I grew up at my father’s yard and have ridden out for as long as I can remember. When I was small I used to gallop behind the lots on my pony! I did compete in show-jumping events but was always just waiting to take out my amateur licence as soon as I was old enough.” “Nicolas did well at a good level in junior show-jumping competitions,” says father Jehan Bertran de Balanda, “but I admit that I did direct him towards racing rather than equestrian sports.” Not that he needed much encouragement. Nicolas started riding as an amateur when he turned sixteen, and he won around 30 races including one over jumps, but admits that he was never a wannabe jockey. “I thoroughly enjoyed the experience but riding wasn’t the be all and end all in my life as it can be for some serious amateur jockeys. When I started working with Pascal Bary I had a lot of work and I didn’t think it right to combine my role as assistant trainer with race-riding so after a few rides during
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