Boyd Martin chatted with Chris Stafford this week and updated everyone on Silva’s condition. Boyd, ever the positive thinker, was in good spirits and reiterated that Silva is slated to make a full, albeit slow, recovery. He also divulged more information on how Silva’s accident occurred.
“She was doing a bit of piaffe on one horse and … apparently it just stepped its outside leg for one step outside the board, then it picked its leg up to continue its piaffe and bring it back inside the ring, and it sort of caught the board. … The horse panicked a bit and tripped over. It was like a bit of a slow motion fall, and it cracked the skull on the way down … She was actually riding a lesson horse,” Boyd told Chris on the show.
Boyd said that Silva has slowly but surely “come back to life” and that he believes she is close to being 100 percent mentally sharp but that she still suffers from double vision and lack of balance due to the amount of bleeding in her brain.
Boyd also expressed his gratitude for the generosity of Mike and Annie Laver, who not only flew him back to Tallahassee to continue competition at Red Hills, but also donated the service of their jet to fly Silva back home to Pennsylvania so that she would continue her rehabilitation at a facility closer to home. The plan, as of now, is for Silva to continue her rehabilitation and, at some point, move home with a nurse or an assisted living situation.
As far as the Martin’s plans for maintaining Silva’s business, Boyd said that he has been in communication with Silva’s sister, who lives in Germany, to make a plan for keeping Silva’s horses in work. “We’ll probably hire another top class rider to keep her really good horses kicking along while she’s coming back to keep her business sort of humming along,” Boyd said.
The outpouring of support that has come from the equine community has not gone unnoticed by Boyd, and he expressed his sincere thanks for the well wishes both he and Silva have received. “The good thing is, she’s not done for. To me, it doesn’t matter if it takes two months or six months to come good, if she misses one show or five shows. The light at the end of the tunnel is that she should make a complete recovery.”
You can listen to the full show on Chris Stafford’s website here and follow along with Boyd and Silva on their blog.