Boyd and Neville Bardos during a recent photo shoot. Photo by Taylor Pence / Incanto Sports Group.
We learned this morning that the great Neville Bardos, the tough-as-nails longtime partner of Boyd Martin, was laid to rest this week at the age of 27.
In terms of horses that launch careers, Neville Bardos could certainly be considered one. It wasn’t that he was the first horse Boyd took around a five-star, or the one that won everything in sight. It was more of what the horse represented: a grit and toughness that Boyd himself has cultivated throughout his career.
This through line can be traced all the way to the origins of Boyd and Neville’s relationship.
It was 2002. Boyd’s business in Australia was in its fledgling phase, building up from a foundation of buying and selling horses off the racetrack — a popular tactic in Australia, where many a top event horse is sourced from the track. Neville was one horse that crossed his path, but he was feral in every sort of way, and he was a cribber. He purchased the horse for $850 (talked down from $900) and quickly lived to regret his decision in the immediate aftermath because Neville was incredibly hot, “half-mad” as Boyd described.
It proved difficult to sell the gelding, so Boyd kept ticking along and eventually produced him to the Advanced level in Australia. In 2007, Boyd and Silva Martin made their big leap to the U.S., and Neville made the trek with them. He, like his rider, took to America quickly, racking up now-5* results and an individual 10th place finish at the 2010 World Equestrian Games.
Then, disaster struck.
In May of 2011, Boyd and Silva’s barn at True Prospect Farm in Pennsylvania burned to the ground, taking the lives of six horses and sending several others into emergency care. One of the latter was Neville, who’d suffered massive burns on his body and severe smoke inhalation. He was treated at the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine, assisted by a breathing tube and sessions in a hyperbaric chamber.
The team had mostly rested their hopes that Neville would ever come back to top sport after the injuries he’d suffered and their potential longterm effects.
But he recovered quicker, and more completely, than anticipated. Hope began to spring eternal again. And then, the impossible: Neville and Boyd went clear around Burghley — the toughest track in the world — just four months after the fire. They would eventually finish seventh.
Boyd Martin and Neville Bardos compete at Kentucky.
It was a poignant, emotional end to a year that had taken much from Boyd. In July, his father, Ross Martin, lost his life in a tragic accident during a bicycle race.
Neville didn’t compete much after that fabled Burghley trip, but he enjoyed the rest of his semi-retirement and full retirement at Boyd and Silva’s Windurra home base. Most recently, he lived out with the next generation of Martin horses, filling their ears with stories of what it took to make it in this life.
“Yesterday, I buried him at the top of our gallop track at the farm. Every time I zoom up that track, I will always think of him at the top of the hill,” Boyd wrote in an emotional tribute posted on social media today. “It’s amazing how horses touch our lives. Never in my life would I have believed that a scruffy off-the-track Thoroughbred would have such an incredible impact on my life.”
It’s the true stuff of legends. We all hoped the movie rights would be sold — the story, after all, made its rounds in mainstream media like the New York Times. But even if Neville isn’t memorialized on the big screen, he’ll forever be a part of the fabric of the sport of eventing, representing what it means when someone just gives you one shot, one chance, to be who you’re meant to be.
Thanks for the ride, Neville. You will be missed.
In his post, Boyd also listed out some of the people who were a big part of Neville’s career and life:
“So many people have helped me with Neville over the years. Firstly, his grooms and handlers throughout his career: Kate Chadderton, Shannon Kinsley, Lindsay Taylor, and Steph Simpson. They all equally loved him and cared for his every need during the prime of his competition career. I also want to thank his farriers, Bob Sims in Australia and Doug Neilson in America, for their care and dedication to Nev over the years.
“Sarah Reese cared for him, rode him, and groomed him every day in the twilight of his life. Neville loved Sarah, and she really looked after him like the champion he was.
“I had so many coaches who helped me with him across two countries. Obviously Silva (who rode him at his first-ever eventing competition at Scone Horse Trials, and fell off him in the XC!), Heath Ryan, Jamie Coman, and Leesa Robinson in Australia, and in the US, Phillip Dutton, Katie Prudent, Lauren Hough, Michael Barisone, Oded Shimoni, and Captain Mark Phillips.”
