PrintOn May 31, Boyd Martin had one goal in mind for Neville Bardos: survival.
His Alltech FEI World Equestrian Games partner had been trapped in the devastating fire that ravaged Martin’s barn and killed six horses. Neville was the last one out, saved when Martin and Phillip Dutton went back into the flames against the firemen’s orders.
Now, just two months later, Martin has a much different goal for Neville: the Land Rover Burghley CCI**** in England.
“I said to myself that night, ‘If this horse can survive and live out his days in my back yard, that’s all I want.' He’s surprised everybody, including me,” said Martin.
“The night of the fire, it was about 5 a.m. by the time we got him to New Bolton, and the vets said that his blood results were shocking,” he recalled. “There was so little oxygen in his blood; there’s no question he sucked in a lot of smoke.”
But the veterinary team couldn’t make out why Neville’s symptoms didn’t match the trauma he’d been through. When they scoped him, his throat was “burnt to a crisp,” according to Martin, but the gelding was still eating hay and happily cribbing on his water bucket.
“Initially they said he was just lucky to be alive,” Martin said. “A couple of days later, they said, ‘He should live, but we don’t think he’ll compete again.’ And then a couple of days after that, they said, ‘He's healing so quickly that he might compete again next year.’ ”
Neville was released from New Bolton on June 7, and he spent two weeks getting daily treatment in a hyperbaric oxygen chamber. Subsequent scopes of his throat showed even more impressive healing. So with the nod from the veterinarians, Martin started riding him again.
“He felt happy,” he said. “I never thought past the current day. I’d ride him one day, and if he felt good, I’d do a bit more the next day. I’m watching him like a hawk; he’s a good friend of mine, and I want to do right by him."
As Neville gained strength, Martin was dealt another blow when his father, Ross, died on July 4 after a cycling accident in Australia. Then 18 days later, his wife Silva’s father, Christoph Stigler, passed away in Germany. The two men were active athletes and good friends, and losing them hit the couple especially hard.
Boyd now plans to dedicate his Burghley performance to his dad, who’d watched Neville progress from a young horse in Australia to the top U.S. finisher at the WEG. He’d long been planning to travel to England to watch him compete this fall.
“I figured I might as well have a crack at [Burghley]. It’s a long shot, but Neville just kept passing all the tests and ticking all the boxes,” he said. “We’ve had a very short time to get the horse fit—eight weeks to get ready for the world’s toughest four-star. But I know the horse, and he’s a tough, resilient horse and a good galloper, and I feel he wants to do it.”
Back In His Element
At the Millbrook Horse Trials in Millbrook, N.Y., Aug. 6-7, Neville won the dressage in advanced, division 1, on a score of 27.8, then loped around the cross-country, picking up 11.6 time penalties. Even with a rail down in show jumping, the pair still finished fourth.
