Paris 2024 Olympics - Boyd Martin returns to the Olympic stage, ready to deliver emotional tribute
Boyd Martin slowly lowers himself into the ice bath.
The cold of the water bites at his body as he sinks in. A feeling of breathlessness takes over. He tries not to fight the panic—deep, slow breaths.
The countdown has begun: three minutes.
Outside, the sun is just beginning to rise. It’s a welcome sight after over an hour of physio and stretching. It’s also a reminder of the long day ahead.
After his artic plunge, the next 11 hours will be entirely devoted to the horses. Liaising with his groom, training, and conditioning: it will all need to be done and Martin is entirely willing, but at 44 years old his body needs a bit more persuading. The 22 surgeries, 19 broken bones, five plates, two screws and a metal rod he has amassed over the years eventing have taken their toll. Still, he’s prepared to be patient. And so the icy torture continues.
If it sounds excruciating, it is and yet for Martin, it’s a must.
“When you go to the Olympics, by far the oldest people there are the equestrians. It's unusual to make it to the Olympics before the age of 40, and a lot of them are in their late 50s, you know, even 60s. So, the biggest thing is to keep your body going,” Martin explains candidly on a video link from his training facility, Windurra USA, in Pennsylvania.
“As you get older, you get stiffer and sore and then that's sort of impacting your balance and your reaction because a lot of it is balance and core strength on the horse.”
Eventing, the sport that demands physically so much from Martin, is quite unlike any other on offer at the Olympic Games.
It most resembles a triathlon in the sense that it puts riders and their mounts through three events.
First up in the three-day-long equestrian showcase, is dressage. Akin to a floor routine in artistic gymnastics, it demands grace, poise and precision as detail and artistry are under the spotlight. Music is key. And it’s here the tone is set before a switch in gear.
Day two, cross country, is where fast and furious meets make or break. Horses and their riders must pound across a course designed to challenge their limits. Enormous jumps meet watery ditches; it’s like driving a Formula 1 car, except around a rally track, and the car is alive and can reject your request if just for a millisecond human and animal are out of sync.
If you survive the drama, the final test is show jumping where precision is again brought back into focus as riders and horses must clear jumps as high as 1.65m in a set time. Penalties, known as faults, are incurred for any misstep. After, winners are crowned and hearts are broken.
"I knew straightaway this is where I'm going to stay"
Born and raised in New South Wales, Australia to two Winter Olympians - Toy Dorgan and Ross Martin - Martin was naturally obsessed with sport growing up.
He tried his hand at all the activities that came his way; anything to avoid the confines of the classroom.
“I was terrible at school,” Martin says. “Lucky to finish school, to be honest. Not once at the dinner table was there any mention of college or university”.
It was a love for horses that eventually won him over to the art of equestrian. The hard work and challenge it entailed along with the camaraderie was the perfect match for his boundless energy.
“The first pony was a horse called Willy and his competition name was Willy Do It. And he was about this big,” Martin gestures around just over table height.
“The first time I went eventing; it was my first competition, and I fell off three times. Once in the show jumping and twice in the cross country. And, I had to chase him down on foot and catch him again. I came dead last but I loved jumping over the cross country jumps and fell in love with it then.”
When he finished high school at 17, Martin moved two hours north of Sydney to become a working student for Olympian Heath Ryan. “He was a madman,” Martin recalls, “but he was the ultimate horse trainer and the perfect mentor for a young wild boy.”
Under Ryan’s tutelage, he soon developed to become the best eventer in Australia. But after conquering all the competitions at home and across the Tasman in New Zealand, his eye began to turn to bigger and better horizons.
“I always wondered how I'd compare to the guys on the other side of the world. And I took a chance. I had a horse called Ying Yang Yo, he was an off-the-track thoroughbred former racehorse and I came to America on a cargo plane. I left Australia in the middle of summer and got here in the middle of winter with my horse. And as soon as I got to America, I looked around and thought, ‘Yeah’. I knew straightaway this is where I'm going to stay for the rest of my life”.
Boyd Martin: From Sydney to Pennsylvania
With a dream in his mind and no tangible backup plan, Martin wasted no time putting down roots in his new home.
His first point of connection was fellow Australian expatriate Phillip Dutton, who handed him a start as an assistant rider and stable hand. There, he spent five years under Dutton learning the new level that would now be required if he wanted to succeed.
“That was a huge sort of education of how to be a real champion and the art of training horses and picking the best horses in a real system and how to get them fit. And then, luckily, you know, for my first three Olympics, he was on the team as well. So, it was a bit of luck. I felt like I sort of ended up in the right place at the right time.”
While Martin may have had the rub of the green then, he remembers his start in the States as tremendously hard work.
“Anything that could have gone wrong went wrong. And I was lucky I didn't have a better ‘Plan B’ if that makes any sense. This is all I love: this is all I wanted to do. I wasn't good at anything else, and even when I felt like it was going terribly, I had no option but to put my head down and keep working away.
“There are a lot of foreigners who have moved to the United States and to England to do this sport, and that’s a hungry individual: a person that's prepared to leave the comforts of home, the security of their normal life, their family. They get on a plane to another country on the other side of the world, desperate and hungry to do this one thing. I also started the sport in Australia which is very primitive and remote and there’s not much money in it. At the competitions, I remember sleeping under the back of the trailer at the horse show. I remember not sleeping for three days to get to a competition. Then you come to the greatest country in the world, the United States… Man, I love it here,” Martin continues.
“My first ten years, I was riding the worst horses you've ever seen. Any horse that would come my way, I'd ride it. And that was dangerous in that world. Now I'm in heaven riding the quality of horses that have come my way."
"It takes a long time; you've got to be patient"
No one day at Windurra is the same.
Each of Martin’s horses will be worked for about an hour with the focus of the training changing depending on what’s needed. Every detail will be carefully planned out adapting to what competitions lie ahead.
One thing that never changes is the need to control emotions.
“There are days where it just isn't going well, and the worst thing you do is lose your cool or lose your temper or whatever because that gets you nowhere,” Martin explains, painting a picture of the complex relationship between horse and rider and what it takes to develop it to the winning level.
“To me, it takes about two years of consistent training with your horse to build a partnership. To start with it's a bit like a new relationship. You fall in love and this is the greatest horse ever. You have dreams of where this new relationship can take you and then bit by bit, you start learning each other's traits and habits and then all of a sudden you realise that it spooks at the corner in the ring or it charges off after the fence.
“So then, you got to start working away at these tiny, little things that would affect your performance. And you’ve got to transfer all that training over into competition. The first couple of competitions are just survival. You go to get around and it’s, ‘Whew I got through it’. And then the next time it's a little bit easier. And then next time it's even more easy.
“After three or four years, I'm thinking something and he knows what I'm thinking. So, if I look over there, he turns that way,” Martin continues, pointing as he illustrates the strength of the bond. “Or if I lean my body just one inch forward, he accelerates. And by the time you get to this Olympic level, it's just this amazing connection between horse and rider. You don't even realise you're doing something and he's with you. It's a really cool process. It takes a long time; you've got to be very patient.”
Boyd Martin (centre) celebrates after winning individual eventing gold at the Pan American Games Lima 2019
‘Ride for Annie’
If anyone should know what is possible when the relationship between horse and rider is in perfect step, it’s Martin.
Currently sixth in the FEI Eventing World Athlete rankings, the U.S. rider is one of the most successful international athletes in his discipline with two five-star event wins, three Pan American gold medals and three Olympic appearances (2008, 2012, 2016) to his name.
In June this year, Martin received a call to tell him that he had made his fourth Olympic eventing team for Paris 2024 adding another key footnote to his impressive resume.
It was a moment he knew was coming. Deep down he sensed he and 14-year-old Dutch Warmblood Fedarman B belonged in the squad but still, it was an intensely bittersweet moment.
The gelding, Fedaraman B, known as “Bruno”, was initially raised to the four-star level by Annie Goodwin an eventing rider coached by Martin. Goodwin was tragically killed in an accident while riding him in July 2021. Her death was deeply felt by the riding community in the U.S.
“It was a horrific chapter in everyone’s life here in America that knew Annie,” Martin says. “This was her special horse and she bought him as a three-year-old horse and produced and got him up to the levels.”
Goodwin’s parents, who were friends of Martin’s, asked him if he would be interested in riding Bruno. He accepted their request: “I felt [I had] like this living memento or I'm finishing Annie's work.” But the beginning was far from easy.
“To be honest, it started off as a disaster,” Martin admits. “When I first teamed up with him, he was not sure of me. I couldn't even catch him in the paddock. Then getting on him was a nightmare; he wouldn't let me get on him.
“My first couple of competitions were horrendous. I was embarrassed. We got disqualified in our first couple of events. He just didn't understand me or he didn't believe in me. We'd come to a jump and stop and go the other way. And I just was so sad, everyone didn't quite know what to do.”
Realising things couldn’t continue, Martin decided to pare everything back and restart the relationship.
“I honestly thought that I was equally as good as Annie as a rider and that I'd get this horse and then take off straight where she left from. And I couldn't have been more wrong. It was a humbling thing where I honestly, those times and days and weeks from like, what am I doing wrong? Like I thought this would be easy. And then I looked back and watched all the training videos in the competition videos from Annie, and tried to copy her style of riding.
“There's an old saying that old horsemen have: the fastest way is to go slow. And I had that lesson served straight up to me with Bruno at the beginning of our partnership.”
After eight months together, suddenly Martin sensed a change, and he and Bruno finally clicked.
“It was spooky. All of a sudden as I start thinking something, he's with me. And we've been all over the world. Last year he competed in France and Germany and was unbelievable. He's one of the best horses in the world, I think. And now we've got this partnership together where I've just got complete trust and faith in him.”
It’s obvious as Martin speaks of Bruno and his unique traits, quite how much responsibility he feels for making good on the foundations laid by Goodwin. His charming, easygoing nature shifts slightly as he considers the significance of their pairing.
“It's emotional, you know? I try not to think about it too much.
“It’s just a great story out of a tragic story - that Annie's special horse that she purchased and trained all those years and years and years is getting to the place that she dreamt of but sadly, she's not here for it.
“It's funny, animals, they get to your emotions sometimes and this is a great horse, Bruno. He's got a huge cheering squad in our sport, a great story and I just feel privileged and honoured to be the one steering him around there in Paris.”
Boyd Martin on Paris 2024: "It's just another horse show for us"
With France’s iconic Chateau de Versailles set to be the backdrop of all equestrian events at Paris 2024, glitz and glamour won’t be too far behind Martin and Bruno when they begin their Olympic pursuit with dressage on Saturday 27 July.
But for Martin, none of that will matter.
“Apparently it's a pretty famous place,” he says with a smile, “I remind the viewers here I hardly made it through high school, “ still grinning before then switching voice as he weighs up his and Bruno’s chances.
“This is how I'm looking at it: it's just another horse show for us. The jumps are going to be the same height. The arena with jumping in is going to be the same dimension. I'm going to try and block out the people, the crowds, the expectations, the pressure. It's just another competition.
"I feel like when I'm at the big competitions, I know how to put myself on a level where I can get comfortable being uncomfortable," Martin continues. "Everything in the training so far is just perfect. He's healthy, I'm healthy. We're performing. Well, it was just a matter of staying calm and making sure that the moment doesn't get to you.
“I feel like if I give my personal best - me and Bruno's personal best - if we get the best performance we can get then let the chips fall where they may.”
Find out where you can watch Boyd Martin and Fedarman B compete at the Paris 2024 Olympics, here.