Boyd Martin: Olympics, Team USA, Otis, Richland, and Fair Hill

Boyd Martin was kind enough to speak with me Saturday afternoon at Richland as the advanced pairs galloped around us.  I don’t always agree with Boyd, but I couldn’t have agreed more with him today about the big picture issues we talked about.  I agree with Boyd that much of the failure of the US eventing team in London was due to a near perfect storm of bad luck for Will, Phillip, and Otis.  Will could ride that drop 100 times and never have a stop, and when (if ever) was the last time Phillip had a stop in the show jumping at a big event?  But, other moments throughout the Olympics–the lack of quality depth pre-Olympics, our ranking after the dressage, and our inability to overcome the aforementioned bad luck were symptoms of a system that must and will change.  We’ll get much more into the future of Team USA over the next few weeks, but I’ll just say that I fully expect that Boyd is correct in that almost everything will change.  I was glad to hear Boyd say that Otis will be back in action after 4 months off.  As always, thanks for taking the time to speak with us Boyd and for much more from Boyd be sure to follow him on Twitter and Facebook.  Go eventing.