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The second half of the session at the well-attended and well-received MSEDA General Meeting was a general Question and Answer Session with guest speaker Boyd Martin and it was no holds barred. Boyd didn’t blanch at anything and replied to each question frankly and thoughtfully. Apart from a few of the longer, and very amusing stories that don’t translate well onto the page I haven’t left a lot out because I found most of it fascinating. I’m actually glad I got to sift through all my notes and type it all up as I got to appreciate it all over again and digest it a bit more slowly and I hope you’ll do the same. Bon Appetit…!
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When Neville was a little bit off in England and you thought originally it was his foot or his ankle, who finally diagnosed it, how long did it take, and how are you treating it now?
“Neville’s lameness in England was about half a degree, minute, it was something that most of us couldn’t see in a trot up; if you were a real expert perhaps you could see it. Initially he’d had sore heels and Phillip had looked at him and helped him. There were twelve horses in England at the camp, and just to let you know, in the team situation that we were in, once your horse isn’t perfect you’re out. It’s not a very comfortable place, you’re in a situation where you haven’t yet been selected for the team, you’ve got your friends there but you’re hoping that you’re going to get ahead of them, so once your horse was not 100% you’re out of the way basically. They pull you in and they say thank you very much but we’re not worrying about this horse any more, and then to get access to the team vets while they’re trying to work on everyone else’s horses is very difficult. Once we got home, we took him to the New Bolton clinic and did a bone scan on the horse, and he had a part of arthritis in his neck. Whenever you think a horse is lame you’re blocking it’s foot, ankle, tendon, suspensory, pulling your hair out…..! Anyway, they gave him some medication called Depomedrol but it’s a steroid which will eventually wear off. I also have a chiropractor for him and a horse massage specialist that does stretching in that part of the neck – there’s nothing that horse doesn’t get; yesterday he got an acupuncturist, today a massage, it’s costing me a bloody fortune!”
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Can you comment on the High Performance Spring Training Lists, and the fact that Otis and Neville aren’t on those lists?
“I couldn’t care less! Funnily enough in the beginning of 2012 I had a horse called Remington who wasn’t on the A List, B List, C List or any list and I laughed to myself because he was in the truck at Greenwich Park on the Wednesday, the day of the trot up, as the reserve horse for America. I can understand why they left Otis off the list because he’s coming back off his injury now and he’s probably not going to make Rolex this year, although we may do Luhmuhlen or Pau. Neville – it doesn’t bother me but you wonder why; they ask you not to run the horse so I saved him for most of last year, and then he was sore in England right before the Olympics and they scratched him off the list! For a young rider who’s seeking recognition I think it might be more upsetting not to be included but I’m not really that bothered. At the end of the day it should be about results, that’s the key with making a team. I don’t care who the the coach or the selectors are, it’s the performance that gets you on a team and if you turn in an outstanding performance and your horse is sound you’re going to make the team. Put in performance and results that they can’t say no to.”
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What are kind of bit did you use cross country on Otis in London; in the picture it looked like you had neck strap or did you have two reins?
“This horse Otis is a very good jumper but he jumps very big behind, very hard behind and he almost lands on his head a little bit. He’s quite a strong horse and that bit is a cherry roller gag. I don’t really like big bits but the problem I’ve got is if you just have the gag part it’s good to slow them up but you lose your turning ability. I hate riding with two reins but it’s the only way I could figure it out. The second rein is on the snaffle for turning, and when he starts to get a little bit strong and rude, you can pull the bottom rein, but to be quite honest you’re just pulling back on both reins! It’s basically a bridle I’d be using as a last resort, you’d try every other piece of equipment you have before you try that.”
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What are you looking for for yourself in an upper level horse?
“I’ll probably buy a lot more young horses, a lot more three-, and four-, and five-year-olds, and then if the time is right and the situation is right, like with Otis, I’d try and jump in and grab a two star horse. Buying a made-up horse at that level doesn’t work that often. Usually if a horse is a two star horse at that level for sale it’s no good, or it’s unsound. How many of you in here, if you had an unbelievable two star horse, it wouldn’t matter how much people offered you it wouldn’t be for sale? The number one thing stopping a horse from being a four star horse is the ability to gallop flat out for eleven or twelve minutes. I would be very, very nervous about buying a horse with less than 70% thoroughbred; there are exceptions to the rule where you see horses that are half and half or even more, like Remington was pretty much all warmblood but he came up a little bit short in the speed and endurance side of things. That would be my number one thing – if you buy something with too much warmblood you don’t realize that the horse might not be good enough until six years later, and that is a painful thing to go through because you’ve put in thousands of hours of training and you’ve dragged him all over the countryside and you’ve produced him, and you’re at a CCI*** and someone taps you on the shoulder to say he can’t make it, it’s too far. Obviously your horse has got to have a natural jump, and the dressage is important. What’s most important about the dressage is that he does have a little bit of quality but that he’s trainable – trainability is more important than ability. We often get dragged towards the really flashy, fancy horse that’s a bit nuts but you’re much better off going after a quieter more trainable horse, and that’s something that’s hard to evaluate when you’re trying them. The biggest thing, I think, when you’re trying out a horse is it’s got to be love at first sight. If you’re riding it around and trying to convince yourself that it’s the right one then it’s not the right one. Every horse that’s worked out well for me I knew it within two minutes, and every horse that didn’t work out was one of those ones that other people were convincing me it was a good horse.”
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When you’re looking for an upper level prospect what height limitations do you put on a horse?
“There’s exceptions to every rule. One of the greatest horses of all time was Charisma who was 15.2. I rode one horse around a 4* called Extreme who was 15.1 and he could jump like a kangaroo, that’s why he was called Skippy. Then you’ll get horses at the other end of the spectrum; if you look at the silver medalist from Hong Kong I think McKinlaigh was about 18hh. Look at Theodore O’Connor who was literally a pony, so if Ioved everything about a horse but it was a bit small or a bit tall and every other box was ticked I would probably go with it. Ideally, if you go through the laws of probability and went through all the Olympic Games and worked out statistics then you’d probably want a horse between 16hh and 17hh, probably 70% TB, probably a gelding, probably black…! At the end of the day though you’ve got to go with your gut; if you think it’s the right horse and it looks a bit funny – still buy it because they’re the ones that work out. If you go too much to just what everyone else is doing it’s hard to do something exceptional because you’re always thinking inside the box, and then you’re just pretty much the same as everyone else.”
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When you’re talking about the horse being 70% Thoroughbred, do you look at the pedigree, and are you looking for horses that are more sport horse oriented thoroughbreds?
“I always think you’re better off looking at the horse. If the horse looks like an athlete and can gallop I think that’s more important than the percentages on the bit of paper, and you’ll see that as well with racehorse people when they buy yearlings; the really good guys that get the successful horses, the talented people that can look at the way a horse moves and how it’s put together, it’s length of neck and shoulder, etc etc, versus the ones who just look at a piece of paper and tell you who it’s by, the latter ones are those who tend to come up a bit short. You’re better off evaluating the horse as it is, looking at the horse and seeing if it fulfills your requirements, if it moves and jumps well, if it has a good nature, and then look at its breeding. If it’s by a stallion that breeds a heap of crazy, mad horses then the chances are it’s going to have that element, or it breeds uncareful jumpers you’ve got to try not get too emotional and take that into account. Sometimes I’d buy a horse with less than 70% thoroughbred if it looked like an athlete, and I’ve made the mistake of buying horses with more than 70% thoroughbred that aren’t athletes. I’ve probably bought 150 horses in my life and seventy of them have been disasters! That’s life – you’ve just got to take a deep breath, don’t even go through your cheque book and work out how much you’ve spent on shoes, entry fees and vet bills, and get out of them. As soon as you’re not in love with it, sell it and don’t even worry about getting your money back, don’t even worry about breaking even, just be done with it; move it on and try again.”
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When you raised the money to go and buy an upper level horse that ended up being Otis, why did you go to France?
“It was an unusual moment for me because it was the first time I’d had the opportunity to spend a large sum of money and to buy a horse at a certain level, and a lot of pressure comes along with that. For that kind of money to buy that kind of horse, if you make a mistake you don’t get a second go at it! It was nerve-wracking but we had a budget and we had some criteria – we wanted a horse that would have a chance to go to the London Olympics, and at that point we had 18 months, which meant really that the horse had to be incredible and at least be going at 2* level. I thought France was a good place to go because it’s the least scoured country of horses; because the French don’t speak much e\English it’s not that sorted through for customers and I think England and Ireland are definitely trampled over by people after people after people. We found this horse through a friend of mine who spoke French and it was in the back of beyond in France, so I think we did get a little bit lucky finding him and no one else really knew about him.”
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Why aren’t they developing horses in the USA?
I think they are – in 2012 I bought two big time horses here; one was Trading Aces and the other was Master Frisky, both two star horses and although sadly they were born in Europe, they were brought over here as four-year-olds and produced by American riders and I had the opportunity to buy them. The sad part for America is that out of the twelve horses America took to England for training camp last summer before the London Olympics, out of the twelve horses that flew out of JFK, only one was born in America; Arthur was the only horse born in America and every single other horse was either born in Europe or Australia. That’s sad because it sends a message to the kids in here who are aspiring to be Olympians that the laws of probability show that you can’t get a horse from America and do it, and I think that’s another disadvantage in this country. We’re at a point here in this country where if we want a horse that’s competitive, we have to firstly get an owner that’s interested in buying the horse, then we have to buy a ticket and fly to Europe and spend at least a couple of days looking, then we have to find an agent that we trust isn’t going to rip us off, then we find a horse that we like and probably buy it for an inflated price, vet it, fly it back to America and by then it will probably owe us $50,000 when in reality it’s only worth half that. Then if for whatever reason it doesn’t work out and you decide you have to cut your losses and sell the horse, that’s when new owners can quickly become disillusioned and perhaps decide not to re-invest. I do still think that the thoroughbred horse is a good model but finding the right one is a little bit like finding the needle in the haystack, I believe that our most ideal event horse is mostly thoroughbred with a splash of French or Dutch or Irish or whatever. If you live in England you can jump on a ferry and go to Ireland and try an Irish Sport horse, go on a train and try a Dutch Warmblood, go to France and try a Selle Francais and you can be back home that afternoon.
“In America, I don’t think we have much of a breeding program here yet. I can only think of five breeders over here in the US that are breeding exactly what we’re after for eventing; the majority of breeding in America is someone’s got a mare that’s gone lame and then they buy some frozen semen and breeds it, and that’s sad when you compare it a nation like Germany. I bought a three-year-old from Bruce Davidson and two three-year-olds from Phyllis Dawson last year, and they were just about what I thought was a great looking event horse. They are only breeding a handful of event horses and they’re probably too expensive but the alternative was to fly to Europe and spend a week trying to find a horse that matches up. I think America, Australia and New Zealand had a huge advantage early in the nineties and 2000’s because the ideal event horse was the thoroughbred and we had the best thoroughbreds in the world and there were plenty of them left over from racing. I’ve bought a number of American thoroughbreds and I’ve struggled to find really rangy, tall, English-type thoroughbreds. The thing that I came up against was that the two year old sprinting breeds a 15.2hh downhill, scatty mover. The other thing that’s sad is that you can race on bute and lasix. In Australia you can’t race on any of that medication, so as soon as the horse goes a bit lame they turn it out and rest it, whereas I believe in America they can keep on racing it and by the time the horse is really lame on medication the chances of it recovering to be a successful, sound eventer are a lot lower than in other countries where they don’t race on drugs. I’m not an expert on American racing but that’s the experiences I’ve had – it produces horses that aren’t ideal for dressage and the fact that they have pretty open drug rules destroys quite a few potential eventers.”
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Can you address the cultural differences between Australia and America from the point of view as a rider?
“If you look at the USEA leaderboard I don’t think it’s completely coincidental that of the top ten or so riders nearly half of them have learnt their craft in different countries. I think as Americans we’ve got to look outside of America a little bit to see how we develop young riders, how do we select horses, how do we get competitive on the world stage, how do we improve all over the board…In Australia the training of a young person is much more rough and ragged, the horses have to be tough and so do the riders and I think initially that makes for more horsemen. I think in America sometimes we may try and accelerate that process by buying a made-up horse, or making everything a little too easy. Without hotels or stabling, and with cheaper farriers and entries and so on, eventing is a lot more affordable in Australia; a lot of our best riders came from very modest beginnings and just grafted to make it, take Chris Burton, Jock Paget, Phillip Dutton even. I think the other thing that produces foreign riders more than Americans at the moment is in Australia, Germany, France, New Zealand, Holland….you would be a very proud parent if your kid finished high school and told you he wanted to be a professional horseman, and on graduating high school that kid would be 100% committed right from day one. I worry sometimes in America that there are too many people dabbling in it, simultaneously going to college so they have a degree to fall back on, not fully committing to their riding, so instead of riding for twelve hours a day they’re studying for eleven and only riding for one. For every twelve hours of practice I do, they do one hour, and then multiply that by seven days a week. Then when we get to the competition the person who has been doing one twelfth of the work that I do can’t understand why I’m so much better than him? Unfortunately I think that is something that holds this country back whereas in Germany there is absolutely a culture of barns full of 18, 19, 20-year-old kids that are doing horses full time. I did my first CCI**** when I was 19 years old and if you look at Kentucky this year I don’t know if there’ll be many 19-year-olds doing their first four star from America, it’s more likely to be 25 or 26. The girl who works for me Caitlin Silliman is 21 years old, but she didn’t’ do the college thing, and she’ll be hopefully taking two horses this year for the first time. The point I’m trying to make is if you’re going to do horses you can’t dabble in it and think you’re going to be competitive on the world stage, it’s just not going to happen.”
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So how should a young person go about making their way for themselves in the eventing world and carving out a career?
“First of all, there’s no set way. I think the way I did it is the way that’s the most successful – if you look at the people at the top of the sport the majority of them have been connected to someone and worked for them and learnt from them because the thousands of hours that I spent around Heath and Phillip – I could have paid for a riding lesson every single day of the week and not got anywhere near that amount of information. You’ve got to be in it and breathing it, seeing how they handle a lame horse, deal with an owner, the training techniques used with this particular horse that’s not very fit, day after day, It’s a huge, huge amount of work, and I hear people say they can’t afford it but if you’re desperate enough to do something, you’ll do it. There’s no excuse or reason if you’re motivated enough. The biggest thing is to get close to someone who’s unbelievable, don’t get a position with the best paying job, you’ve got to get a job with the person who you think is the best person in the world or that you have access to. There might not even be a job but you can make yourself invaluable to that person so that you create a job. Denny Emerson wrote a book called “How Good Riders Get Good” and I urge anyone who’s got that to read Beezie Madden’s paragraph. Find the person you want to emulate and whatever it takes you’ve got to be hanging off them and you’ve got to be doing anything to make them have you there. That was basically the case when I went to Phillip’s, I didn’t have a job but after a couple of days I was working so hard that he made a job for me. I think that’s the best way, but it’s got to be the right person, it’s got to be someone who’s out there doing it and doing it well, riding well. If you feel like you’re weak in the dressage go and work for a dressage rider, or go to a jumping stable. America is full of unbelievably talented coaches and you’ve got to study them and you can’t take no for an answer. I don’t think you can do a job on the side and still be competitive with guys like Michael Jung. Hell, while I’m talking to you those guys are probably training right now!”
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What do you think America has to do to get better?
“I think in this country we’re poor at the production of riders. If you evaluate America’s top group of riders against every other nation they’re older. The majority of good ones here are between the ages of forty and fifty, whereas in other nations it’s between twenty-five and thirty-five so somehow somewhere between our production of really awesome young riders and becoming professional I think we’re losing them. I think America has a fantastic Young rider program, but I think the production of riders is key, and somehow we have talented young riders absolutely bursting with potential that vanish and we never hear from them again, and that’s where I think America’s got to come up with a system. What we have more of than other countries is money and it has nothing to with money; at the Olympics our entourage was almost embarrassing but that doesn’t translate into performance. However, I do think that gets us relatively good access to purchase horses but we’re not doing enough producing horses, and we’re not doing enough to get perfect, young horses into the right hands here. America’s mentality, and I admit I’m guilty of it too, is cheating a little bit and going off and buying a prelim or two star horse for heaps of money rather than finding that horse as a four year old and producing it; that makes us less as riders and the chances of buying an unbelievably outstanding horse at that level are very low, it’s just the way it is. I don’t want to come across as anti-American because I am American and I love the country but going back to the riders, I don’t think it’s something you can do half heartedly. I question the work ethic sometimes, the amount of people that come and work for me and then quickly go off and do something else – it’s hard, hard, hard work, all day every day, and when you’re not working you’re thinking about working, you’ve got to be so enthralled with it.”
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Do you think the top riders are spending too much time teaching and making a living, and should concentrate more on riding?
“I’ve generated a lifestyle for myself where I have to earn x amount of money to survive – I have a mortgage now, I have wages to pay, I spend $14,000 a month on hay and straw, people that stay with me have to stay in accommodation when we go to shows…Yes, I would love it if the USEF asked me how they could help me do my job of simply being the best rider I could be. I’d love to go to Wellington this winter and train with George Morris in the show-jumping and Michael Barisone in the dressage but there would be no way I could run a viable business to go down there and get better and better and better. I just couldn’t do it if you’re a person like me that’s trying to have a viable business. At this time of the year it’s a break-even business, it’s a matter of if you can just come up with a system of paying your expenses. That’s just the way it is and I feel more like that’s my problem; I’ll make money here today talking at the MSEDA and I’ll spend that money tomorrow when I go to Ocala to train. In my line of thinking it’s my job to come up with a way to figure this out, and if the USEF or David O’Connor can come and contribute more then that would be awesome, but if you’re just sitting around waiting for that I don’t think it’s going to happen.”
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How do you think the changes in the eventing scene, specifically with David O’Connor becoming coach and having a different focus on the training, will affect our team?
“I think there’s no question that there’s going to be changes at the high performance level of the sport with the change of the coach. Rather like getting a new President, having a new person can only do so much day by day but I think David is definitely positive, he’s got a serious plan outlined and there’s no questioning his passion. I think we need an overhaul; we’re competitive but we’re not cutting edge. I think we have good horses, I believe we all have to become better riders and better trainers.”
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How has Silva influenced you?
“Before I met Silva I rode in tracksuit pants every day, didn’t care much for brushing a horse, and dressage was just the seven-minute torture you had to go through before you went out on cross country! I think Silva did a wonderful thing of teaching me that it’s a really important phase in eventing now. Silva has training beyond my understanding of training, she comes with a wealth of understanding and knowledge far beyond what I understand, and the next key is to make the most out of it and to be humble enough to take orders from your wife! There are moments when she’s a bit unpleasant to me when I’m riding but I take a deep breath and keep going. The other thing is she can hop on and take the training of the horses far beyond my level of understanding. Trading Aces struggles with the flying changes and they’re late behind; a good dressage judge will award you a 4 for a late change and at Kentucky this year there are four flying changes so that’s forty marks and at the moment I’d be lucky to get a total of twelve or thirteen out of forty. Without having a person that really understands how to create a clean flying change, and do it so the horse understands it, I’m sunk! I think I’m very, very fortunate to be around people that are way better than me and have much more training and understanding than I do, I’m very, very lucky.”
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Do you and Silva ever get to take a vacation?
“I took her to Las Vegas for three days to watch the Manny Pacquiao boxing match, very romantic. It’s weird though, I admit it sounds like it’s a pretty compulsive life but it seems to work. She came to the England for the Olympics for a week, and then I’ll fly down to Wellington to watch her ride in the CDI, and at the moment this is our thing. I’m sure experts would tell you it’s quite an unbalanced lifestyle but we don’t really know anything else, it’s what we love to do and we enjoy doing it together. I’m happy that we’re in different sports because, not that I’m a relationship expert but I think it would be harder if your spouse was competing in your sport. You often see divorces in two competing riders that are trying to get on the same team, trying to outdo each other a little bit, so I think I’m lucky that we’re in different sports. We can relate to each other though, and I can help her by breaking in her dressage horses, and she helps me with my dressage. If she has a dressage horse that didn’t quite work out then I can teach it to jump and we can sell it that way. We’re quite separate though; at our farm her barn is one side of the driveway and mine is on the other. Her side is all neat and tidy and immaculate, my side is a little more rough and ready! Eventing and Dressage, Germany and Australia! We have different staff, we can’t share staff any more either, that didn’t’ work!”
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When you rode Willy in Australia how did you keep him so clean?
“I didn’t worry about keeping him clean! That was one of the great things about Australia, the only time there was a best-presented award was at Pony Club and I didn’t worry about that one! Don’t worry about keeping them clean too much!”
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What do you do with a horse that’s pulling and pulling and pulling, even if you have side reins, but he just keeps pulling?
“You should get a new horse, I think you need a new horse! I’ve never had a horse that’s been absolutely perfect, there’s always something. I bet everyone in here would say, ‘I love this horse but I wish he had a bigger trot, a better jump, was sounder.…’ I think every person that has a horse has a wish list, and it’s your job as a rider to try and always improve that one flaw, and that’s the hardest thing. Sometimes you get so stuck on that one thing that you forget about all the other reasons why the horse is great for you. That’s one of the hardest things about training horses, you need to try and keep an open mind and focus on all the other things that the judge might see in a dressage test for example that are good, and not just get obsessed with the one negative thing.”
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What exercises do you use for a horse that doesn’t care if it hits rails?
“To be honest there aren’t many horses that want to hit jumps. If you’ve got a horse that’s continuously hitting jumps, there’s something wrong with it, and it’s not a jumper. If you’ve got a horse that’s continually knocking down ten out of eleven jumps and you’ve put in the training it’s not going to be a jumper, and it’s so much more painless to take a deep breath, give him a pat and sell him as a dressage horse or a trail riding horse, don’t try and create something that he’s not. If it doesn’t have natural ability to start with it’s too competitive and it’s too long of a road and there’s too much hard work – you’re much better off placing that horse somewhere else or in a different sport and then trying again. Yes, you can use every trick in the book to try and make him leave the rails up, but my concern is it’s going to break your heart, break your heart when you’ve driven all the way to Richland Park and you’re leading going into the show-jumping and then you have six rails down. Not that I’m encouraging anyone to quit by any means but if you see signs of that early on, remember that you can improve them but you can’t change them.”
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In your days of starting young horses did you ever come across one that was so quirky that you sent it down the road?
“I think every horse has got it’s own story. From The Flying Doctor not running away when we tried him and Lenny was missing a front tooth which was why he was so cheap, and Neville obviously was a very cheap horse and he hasn’t been easy, he has his quirks. They’re all unique and the one thing I’d say about all the good ones, they are a bit quirky. The really really good horses are a bit, I don’t want to say difficult, but they are unusual; it’s the same as those amazing athletes, for instance look at Tiger Woods getting caught with all the girls, or the NFL players that get in bar fights or something like that, really high end athletes are a little bit weird and I think that’s the same with horses! Looking back on my horses they all had a quirk; ironically the majority of them are windsuckers, I don’t know why, but pretty much every horse I’ve got that’s any good has been a windsucker.”
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When you are bringing your horses back from their time off what is your conditioning program to get them up to showing level?
“The key to remember is that the fastest way to go forward is to go slow. I think a horse should go novice as a four-year-old, training as a five-year-old, prelim as a six-year-old, intermediate as a seven-year-old and advanced as an eight-year-old. If you start early enough you’ll have a four star horse at eight years old and that’s still a long time, twelve months, at each level. You see some people do three novices and then go training. As to fitness; bringing a horse in after a spell I would think you’d want to walk for forty minutes for about a week, then I might trot him for five minutes one day, eight minutes the next day, and twelve the following, and build up to twenty minutes of trotting. Week three I’d start doing light flat work. Week four you could do a little bit of flat work, a little bit of fitness work and a little bit of a jump, and I think within six or seven weeks you could have a horse that’s ready to go out and do a novice or training event. If you’re going to hurt a horse, usually you hurt them because they’re not quite fit enough and so you’ll see horses break down usually at the first two events of the year. For example with the upper level horses if you follow the horses that ran at Ocala or Poplar or Pine Top, there will be a few of them that will do two events and then disappear for a while, and it’s usually horses that have come into work a bit quick and then riders have gone flat out at those couple of shows because they got a little bit competitive and their horses aren’t quite hardened up to it and that’s the danger time, that’s when you can hurt them. You’ve got to take your time getting them ready for the event, and take your time at the first show or two – it sucks having injured horses, it’s depressing.”
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Do you do a lot of work off the horse to stay in good shape?
“I think rider fitness is something that America started to take more seriously after 2010. I’m a bit of a gambler and there’s no question that if you go to the races and one jockey is carrying two pounds more than another jockey the odds change considerably in who they think is going to win the race; there’s no question in the sport of upper level eventing where you’re galloping around a course for twelve minutes that the fitness or weight of the rider is influential. To answer your question, Heath Ryan was pretty ruthless – he’d have a white board and he’d write all the working students’ weight up there, it was tough, especially if you were a bit overweight but in Heath’s defense all he was interested in was performance at the top level. If you’re an amateur rider or a person enjoying the sport I think it doesn’t matter at all, I wouldn’t even consider it. If you’re there to enjoy your horses it doesn’t really matter too much but if you’re a rider that’s trying to represent your country and you’ve made a commitment to your teammates that you’re going to try and put in your absolute best performance no matter what, I think then you do have a duty to make sure you’re in good nick. My weight flies around a little bit – at the Olympics and the WEG I was 155lbs and at Christmas this year I was 180lbs! I probably eat and drink a bit too much when the eventing finishes in October and I’ve started dieting now. I have to work quite hard at it in February to get lighter, I run a lot and ride my bike but the biggest thing is what you eat and how much you eat and drink, but I don’t think it matters too much unless you’re at that very highest level of the sport in eventing or dressage where I do actually think it would make a difference. In 2010 I rode three horses around Rolex, which if you figure a twelve minute course that’s 36 minutes of galloping plus the warm-up, you’ve got to be pretty fit to do that, and if you’re not pretty fit then I think you start fatiguing and not riding quite as well. I don’t think it’s going to make you that much of a better rider but it might give you a little bit of an advantage against your competitors if it’s a long, hard cross country. Unfortunately it’s not going to make you better at dressage!”
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How many days a week do you jump school?
“Jumping wise, if I’ve got a younger horse, say training level or less, I’d probably jump him twice a week and once they’re prelim and beyond I’d probably jump them once a week. As you go up the levels heading to the higher levels which require more endurance you do need to do more fitness work which is conditioning – cantering, galloping, trotting, and these are all things that are a little hard on the horses’ legs so to jump them a lot on top of doing that in the same week sometimes, I think is a little bit tough on them. You actually have to back off your jumping a little bit to compensate for the amount of fitness work that you’re putting in. Once they’re prelim and they’re going a bit, you’re not teaching them new things, you’re basically just going through different exercises and showing them different things but you’re not teaching them how to jump, whereas a three- or four-year-old you really might be spending the time trying to teach them about jumping over ditches, and trotting over narrow fences, and later that week repeating it. That’s the key and the beauty of correct training, sometimes less is a little bit better.”
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How much is too much when it comes to competing horses?
“You have to practice being successful. Every now and then you have to practice winning. To me the Horse Trials are a stepping stone to the FEI events, the CCIs and the CICs, and I treat the Horse Trials as preparation for them. The majority of the time at Horse Trials at intermediate and above I’ll run the horses at about 70%, thinking I want a confident run and I want my horse sound when I finish. Then the novice and training level events you should try and win because the speeds cross country aren’t going to injure the horses. A spooky horse I would run a lot but an experienced horse doesn’t need much. For example Neville will probably do six or seven events this year where as a spooky young horse of mine might go out twice a month. There’s no set rule, you just have to figure out what works best for your horse, and what’s convenient perhaps for your owners if you have them, what’s affordable if you don’t. I have no interest in becoming the USEA eventer of the year but I would love to be the FEI #1 ranked rider; the best I’ve done so far was coming third in 2010 and I think I’m about ninth at the moment.”
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What about cross country course design? We had the big galloping courses and then it got very technical and trappy, and now it seems to be evolving towards using the terrain a bit more to challenge the rider?
“It is what it is – what they can’t do anymore is kill people, it’s bad for business! They’re designing courses now that encourage the run-out and I think it also encourages more technical riding. The reality is that courses are getting jammed into smaller and smaller spaces because of the value of open country so I think it pushes the course designer into designing a slightly different course. If you go to Rolex this year they’ll probably have brush jumps into water, I doubt they’ll have a double bounce single rail in because they just can’t afford accidents to be on national television, the same as at the Olympic Games, it wasn’t that dangerous because we can’t afford to have any more deaths or catastrophic horse injuries. I think what’s going to happen is they’re going to make the dressage more technical, within five years time it will be akin to a Prix St Georges test and I bet you they’ll make the show-jumping 1meter 40, and I think the cross country will get more and more technical, it’s not going to get bigger. You won’t see as many accidents, which if we’re going to continue as a successful sport you can’t butcher horses, and somehow they’ve got to keep that and the integrity of the sport. It’s always changing; I remember doing a CIC*** in Australia and having two rotational falls and still show-jumping and finishing and that wasn’t that long ago, within ten years. You can’t fight it, you’ve to got to go with it and adapt to it. Look at Mark Todd for example, he won Badminton in 1979 and if you look at that horse compared to the Badminton winner he rode in 2011 that’s a remarkable adaptation to the change in the sport – it’s a different sport, a different way of riding, different type of horse we’re riding – he managed to win in both eras. There’s no question the dressage is getting better and the show-jumping is getting more technical so you’ve got to go with it and get better at riding your horses, and better training.
“The other reality is you’re still going to have to have different horses for different courses. If you think back to Kentucky in 2010 it was a massive, monstrous, long course and the Germans got destroyed. Now the next Championship two years later was the Olympic Games in a small little park and the jumps are a bit lower and they destroyed everyone. It’s the same with selecting a horse: I’d love to win Burghley one day and I’d be nervous as hell taking a non-thoroughbred horse to Burghley, but if you think about the Olympic Games in Rio in South America it’s probably going to be something similar to England where you’re going to need a whippet of a horse that can deal with the heat, and can run and turn, and that probably won’t be the same horse that could win Burghley and that’s where you’ve got to have exceptions depending on what your goals are.”
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I’m always amazed at the focus that Olympic athletes maintain under pressure – is that something you consciously work on?
“I like to think that I can do quite well in moments of pressure but you have to become familiar with these moments, and after years and years and years of competing and even through my early childhood doing other sports, everyone’s the same, you’re as nervous as hell, thinking about all the things that could go wrong and in that moment it’s such a fine line between holding for one too many strides and panicking and rushing your horse, and that’s where you can really tell the difference, when I talked earlier about going to college or pursuing a sport wholeheartedly, you can see that not doing it full time doesn’t work because it doesn’t matter what level you’re riding at there’s just not enough moments of pressure to give you that match practice you need. It’s about staying in the moment, everyone has distractions and in that moment of pressure and nervousness you’re always going to have things around you to make you lose focus, and you have to learn the ability to switch it on and off. I can remember every single show-jump in that World Equestrian Games show-jumping course, every single canter lead and every single stride; that might have been the moment when I had the most pressure of my life on me riding in front of a home crowd with the most possible distractions, but you’ve got to be able to stay in the moment and tell yourself every second while you’re competing how you’re going to get the job done. That’s what everyone can do better; deal with pressure and be able to absolutely stay focused and positive and not let any outside influences, be it rain or weather or whatever affect your performance, and that’s something that’s worked quite well for me. Funnily enough in that moment of being the first to go into the dressage at the London Olympics I was surprisingly calm.”
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Are you that focused and ‘in the moment’ for the entire twelve minute cross country also?
“I think you have to be. The hard thing with our sport is you have to react as well. You can walk that cross country course twenty times and you know that the big log in the water is going to be three forward strides or whatever, but you have to be ready for your horse to chip, leave a leg and buckle a bit on landing so that you can add for four or if your horse is spooking from the get go on course and bunny hops over the first two fences you need to make a change to your plan and be proactive before he stops at something. The key with cross country is it’s all about feeling what’s happening underneath you and reacting to it. For example at the Olympics I couldn’t just keep focusing on the minute markers and chasing the time because I could feel my horse getting really tired at the end and I knew he wouldn’t finish if I kept up that pace, so I had to change my plan accordingly to bring him home with a few time faults instead. You’ve got to have the plan but also be open-minded enough in your focus that you can change your plan depending on what’s going on underneath you. That comes with experience too, unfortunately you have to make a few mistakes first and that’s something you just learn from years and years of competition. Also being smart enough and brave enough to admit to yourself after a competition if you could have done something a bit differently, and be good enough to not make the same mistake over and over again.”
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Can you elaborate on syndication? I can understand racehorses but why would someone want to buy a share of an event horse?
“If you own an event horse compared to a racehorse there’s not much chance of making any money. Most people who own eventers are people who are passionate about the sport in this country, or have a particular feeling towards one particular horse, or they might be someone who looks at a person and says, ‘This kid’s trying really hard, I really want to support that person” and they don’t really care what the horse is. Eventing is still a sport where you can meet the Queen and you can go to the Olympic Games and that might be some people’s motivation. The syndication thing is good because you basically get the same experience for a fraction of the cost – the way they’re set up is there’s a fixed number that you have to contribute every year towards the horse’s expenses and that number is locked in so if that horse has to have colic surgery, or if you take it to Europe to compete, that owner will not get any extra, unexpected bills. I have a number of people who have an interest in five horses so if you were looking to help out a rider, for the same price as one horse you could own a share in all their horses and that’s been a bit of a motivation. I think they have a good time; they had a reason to get on the plane and go to Burghley, they have a reason to come down to Aiken and watch the training sessions, they have a reason to get the VIP ticket at the Rolex Kentucky Three Day Event every year and go to the owners’ party, they have a unique experience of following the horse’s training, a reason to go to the Horse Trials and watch it go and I’d like to think that the group of them actually have a good time. They go on trips together, they’ll have a party together, they’ll stay in the same hotel – if it’s your joy and your passion and your love I actually think you have more fun doing it this way. I’d like to think that my group have had a hell of a ride through the good times and bad, and they’re all smiling, and I think if the right horse came along again I think I’d be able to get it done again.”
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How do you handle the unexpected expenses within a syndicate?
“Deep breath! It sucks because you’ve got to wear it! Syndication horses are not a money-making horse, they’re not a money-making project, you don’t have them for financial gain. They are a horse that you’ve got dreams and aspirations of representing your country and doing something exceptional with, and if you’re lucky you’ll break even. That would be the reason I’d teach a lesson or take a clinic – some of that money goes back into the shortfall on a syndicated horse that I haven’t budgeted enough for.”
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How much interaction do you have with the syndicate members compared to a single owner of a horse?
“There are some people in the syndicate that I’ve never seen or talked to, I’ll just send them emails and updates, and then there are other people that are there every single day watching you train, helping out, coming to all the events and shows, so it’s really up to the individual. For example, Silva’s got a horse of mine called Trading Aces in for dressage training at Aiken and I sent a group email out to the syndicate welcoming them all, and asking them if they’d like to come out and watch the horse train, and six out of ten came. You go to an Olympics or Burghley or Kentucky and you might have seven or eight turn up. The difference in interaction might be that if you owned a horse for an individual and that horse lost a shoe for instance and had a bit of a sore foot, I’d ring the owner, tell him and discuss it with him, whereas with the syndicate I’d just manage it. The key with owners is to try and keep them informed, even when things are going wrong. For example Otis is coming off back from an injury and with Neville last year – it’s easy to tell everyone the good news but the secret to it all is when things start going wrong you’ve got to be just as communicative. I think that’s one of the secrets to ongoing relationships, it’s trying to stay connected through good times and bad. Every single person that had a horse die in the fire now owns another horse with me which I’m quite proud of because it goes to show the quality of people that I have around me, helping me and trusting us, and I also think that in tough situations it’s critical that you handle yourself the right way. That would be my advice to any young person looking to burst out and start their career on the eventing scene: I can guarantee that stuff’s going to go wrong all the time, and it’s how you react and perform and deal with it in that moment that’s going to define you and how you’ll figure out whether you’ll be able to continue.”
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Do you have a favorite place that you like to ride?
“I really enjoy the Kentucky Horse Park. As far as cross country courses go it’s tailor made for my ride a little bit. If you’ve got a fit horse and you’re a good judge of pace it rides really well. You don’t have to hustle, you know that you can ease up going to the quarry and then pick up going down the hill, and it’s a big challenging course. I love riding there, and for the rest of my career I’ll be very, very depressed if I have a year when I don’t have a horse there. It’s got a test of terrain, the turf’s good, the crowd’s brilliant and it’s a course that rewards good riding and fit horses. It gives you a good feel too, if the horses jump around it confidently they finish happy; I’ve done every other four star except Badminton and a lot of the other four stars don’t give you that feel.”
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Many, many thanks again to Boyd for his time, good humour, wit and expertise, and equally to MSEDA for hosting and to it’s members who attended and asked such great questions. Thank you of course as well for reading, and now you’re ready to Go Eventing!
