When Boyd Martin travelled to Paris alongside his U.S. teammate Liz Halliday last summer, he admired how in sync the rider was with her Olympic partner, Cooley Nutcracker.

“Liz always presented the horse and made him look quite easy and beautiful,” Boyd said of the horse-and-rider team, whose dressage test at the Games earned the best score by a U.S. pair since 2008. 

At the peak of that partnership, Halliday sustained a traumatic brain injury in a fall from a different ride at the USEA American Eventing Championships (Kentucky) in August, and her horses were sent to other riders while she focused on her recovery. When he received “Bali,” Martin quickly realized the skill it had taken for Halliday to make that Olympic dressage score of 28 look so effortless.

“When Bali got sent to me, I thought I’d hop on and get started exactly where Liz had him,” Martin said. “It’s been a humbling experience, just because I’m miles off where Liz had him going. The dressage and the show jumping have been a little bit of a work in progress … but, slowly but surely, we’re starting to jell and get a partnership together.”

For now, as the two figure each other out, Martin said he’s been playing it safe with the 11-year-old Irish Sport Horse (Tolan R—Ballyshan Cleopatra, Cobra). 

“I’ve done three or four events on Cooley Nutcracker, and each time I’ve just tippy-toed around and not even tried to be competitive, and just used every event as a bit of a schooling show,” Martin said. 

But in the CCI4*-L at the Yanmar America Tryon International Spring Three-Day Event (North Carolina), Martin decided to see what Bali could do when asked to step up. The pair finished at the top of the pack, clinching their first big win together—and Martin finally got to experience Bali’s exceptional power. 

“On cross-country day, it was sort of the first time I really asked Cooley Nutcracker to open up and gallop—and holy moly, he had a fifth gear that I didn’t even know about,” Martin said. “He has got so much speed and stamina and bravery; I was just blown away with how easy the four-star long felt on him. He’s a really smart, quick-footed horse that’s been beautifully educated and trained, and really it was just a matter of me guiding him and showing him where the flags were.”

Chris Desino, who owns Bali with the Nutcracker Syndicate—him, his brother Rob Desino, Halliday and her mother Deborah Halliday, and Renee Lane—said was happy to see the new team have a breakthrough at Tryon. 

“What was crazy thrilling was watching [Martin] throw the pedal down,” Chris said. “Boyd said this weekend, ‘OK, you guys, this horse is fit. He’s one of the fastest horses. I’m going to let him go.’ He told me that if he didn’t pull up probably in the last two minutes, he would have been 20 or 30 seconds under.”

Martin piloted Bali to a double-clear finish on the cross-country course newly designed by Clayton Fredericks. He said of the design, “I thought he just did a magnificent job of allowing the horses to gallop and giving you that three-day event feel, but then also slowing the riders down and testing their accuracy and their ridability, in bits and pieces of the course.”

He and Bali went double clear again in Sunday’s show jumping, finishing in the lead on their dressage score of 32.7. 

Martin said he’d spoken with Liz, who is recovering at the Centre for Neuro Skills in Dallas, about getting her horses going again, and he gave her praise for how simple she’d made her horses look from the ground. 

“When I talked to her, I just told her how humiliating it’s been riding all of her horses and looking at my results, comparing them to her results,” he said. “So she had a good chuckle about that.”

Liz’s partnership with Bali began about three years ago. Chris remembers when Liz first met the gelding on a shopping trip to France. She tried horse after horse, then Bali gave her pause.

“She immediately sat on him and just felt extremely comfortable,” Chris said. “She felt it was, quote-unquote, her horse. She rode around cross-country, and she felt that the horse was the most talented cross-country horse she’s ever sat on.”

It’s a sentiment echoed by Martin, who said that Bali finished the Tryon four-star feeling better than when he left the startbox. 

“At the end, usually you get to eight, nine, 10 minutes and the horses start tiring a bit. This horse felt stronger. He felt just stronger and braver,” he said. “I mean, to be honest, I could have been 30 seconds under the time. He was fresh as a daisy, and when I finished, I couldn’t believe how well he recovered. He’s just an incredible athlete.”

Chris said that when Liz first began working with Bali, the horse’s show jumping talent and cross-country instincts were immediately obvious, but she had to work at finessing their dressage. Now that Bali is with Boyd, Chris has faith he’ll continue to develop the gelding. Part of that confidence comes from knowing this is the partnership that Liz wanted. After she was injured, her team carefully considered where each horse should go before realizing that Liz had already given them the answer.

“Initially, when this accident happened, we had to kind of think long and hard about who would be best with some of the horses—and Liz had a very deep string of horses, so we didn’t think it was the right decision to send all of them to one rider,” Chris said. “I think Liz had a wealth of amazing horses, many of them which could probably reach the five-star level, and some of them which are Olympic and world championship-level horses. But one thing kind of always was with us.

“She said if anything ever happened to me, Boyd would be my rider,” Chris continued. “She said it just in passing, and it’s something that stuck with us. So that’s the primary driving force.” 

That offhand comment brought Bali to Martin—a pairing that’s been helped by their similar riding styles and the fact they train under the same coaches, Erik Duvander and Peter Wylde.

“I got asked to ride a couple of the horses, and I didn’t think twice,” Martin said. “It will be up to her and her team where we go from here. I’m just honored and privileged to be called up to help her out with a couple of her magnificent horses.”

Martin is also happy to be finding his footing with the powerhouse horse who he says “looks like a bronze statue you see at Kentucky Horse Park,” and he continues to strive to show off the best of Liz’s beloved partner. He’s glad that he can maintain Bali while Liz focuses on her comeback.

“It was devastating when she had a big crash at Kentucky,” Martin said. “I felt like, after the Olympic Games, like there was going to be no stopping Liz here on out. She had a wonderful squadron of horses, and she proved herself on an Olympic team. It’s devastating not only for Liz and her team but also for American eventing.”

After recently visiting Liz in Dallas, Chris says he can see the inner Olympian coming out in the way she’s approaching her recovery. 

“Liz needs no motivation whatsoever,” Chris said of her physical therapy. “She gets a little bit disappointed when the session ends, because she wants to do more. She’s doing great. She’s very happy that the horses are with Boyd.”