Having a father who competed at the Pan Am Games, Burghley, Rolex, and the European Championships has steered Isabelle Landry down the path of a lifelong involvement with horses. Together with her parents Yves and Lysel and husband Pierre Nadeau, the family runs La Crinière Centre d’Entraînement, an expansive eventing training centre in Napierville, QC. Although her father has scaled back on competing, he still designs and constructs cross-country courses, trains horses, and teaches clinics. Her mother is largely responsible for overseeing the operation of the facility: organizing shows, marketing, management, and horse sales. “She is absolutely brilliant at designing and building the cross-country sculptures,” notes Isabelle. “She has a lot of talent with a chainsaw!” One brother, Julien, owns a cabinetry company, and the other, Sylvain, is training to become a farrier.
In addition to the demands of her career as a full-time high school phys ed teacher and the energy required keep up with her two-year-old son Olivier, Isabelle, 42, teaches lessons and trains her four competition horses and numerous young sales prospects. She has always been coached by her father, and insists they never experienced the challenges of the student-parent dynamic that befall so many. “Our relationship has always been great,” Isabelle says. “He was demanding and direct, so I improved quickly. He always knew how to reassure me when there was a challenge, because he knows me so well. The fact that my father had been involved in so many big events also gave weight to his words.”
Isabelle learned a lot about hard work and tough love from her father when, acting on instinct, he rescued a two-year-old Thoroughbred from the slaughterhouse in 1982. Isabelle, who was 12 at the time, quickly fell in love with the small but athletic horse. “I made him mine almost immediately,” she says fondly of BouBou. They began competing in local events two years later. “Even if we fell cross-country, we would get back up and continue – and believe me, that happened several times.”
By the time Isabelle was 17, the pair were competing at intermediate level and were selected for the Quebec Young Rider team. “Full of enthusiasm, I informed my father of the committee’s decision,” she recalls. “He said, ‘Isabelle, your horse is not ready and you still have a lot of work to do in order to prepare him for that level of competition.” Isabelle insisted she be given the chance and her father built several obstacles similar to what they would face in competition to test their mettle. “My father was right; neither BouBou nor I were ready to face that type of course. He told me we would work hard over the coming winter and promised we would be ready.” The pair did their homework and participated in the NAYRC four times, winning a team bronze in ’90 and a silver in ’91. She kept Bou Bou until his passing at the age of 28.
Over the years, Isabelle competed up to advanced level with the mare Vaillante; her current intermediate-level horse is Boucane Junior. “My parents are the reason I’m still riding and still love it so much,” says Isabelle. “They never put pressure on me to perform at any cost.”
Isabelle cites the lessons and ideals learned from a horseman with a wealth of experience.“My father is a man who strongly believes that the most important thing with horses is to love, care for, and respect them, and appreciate their differences by adapting yourself to them,” she explains. “He has also taught me that there is no age restriction to realizing your dreams.
“One day, I was competing and I heard a mother say to her daughter, who had just experienced a failure on the cross-country, ‘you know, Mr. Landry is a 70-year-old and has risen again to compete at the intermediate level; when he was 60, he competed at Rolex. You still have plenty of time to get better.’ He gives a message of perseverance, courage and hope to many riders.”
