Boyd Martin decided to take it a little easy at the Horse Park of New Jersey’s Horse Trials II yesterday.
For the Iron Man, that means he only rode three horses as heat soared into the high 80s and beyond, winning the FEI 3-star on Fernhill Prezley (40.10 penalties) and finishing second on Penhill Celtic (42) while ending up third in the Open Intermediate section with Long Island T (38). Then he let assistant Mike Pendleton take Bonito in the OI division at the Horse Park of New Jersey rather than riding that horse himself..
“I wimped out on Bonito,” Boyd said.
But there’s no need for apologies. This was just a few days after he rode five horses at the mid-week Virginia Horse Trials, and three months following surgery to repair various bone spurs and muscle tears. He was still experiencing some hip and groin pain.
“To be quite honest, I’ve probably bitten off a little more than I can chew,” he said of his workload as he continues to recover.
“At the moment, my body can only take so much. I want to do more, but the body’s screaming at me to take it easy and slow down a bit,” Boyd explained, reporting he’s “still a bit stiff and sore in my hip joints and still a little bit rusty, to be quite frank.”
And then, four days after competing at the Horse Park, he had surgery to remove a bit of bone from his groin muscle where it was stabbing his inner thigh. He’ll be out of action for a few weeks before coming back to finish the season, most probably in a big way, as is his style. But injury has been a fact of his life in eventing, so he has plenty of experience dealing with it..
“I love competition and riding and trying to find that balance where I can keep going for the second half of my career here. I’ve got to understand I’m not 19 years old anymore,” said the Olympic veteran, who turns 41 next month.
“I’ve got a great and decent rider (Mike) that helps with the young horses and also the upper level horses when I’m out of commission. I’m just trying to limit myself at the events at how many I can ride and try to do a very, very good job, rather than just spinning them around.”
Boyd Martin and Long Island T finishing up on cross-country at the Horse Park of New Jersey. (Photo © 2020 by Nancy Jaffer)
Prezley has done only one intermediate previously, while Boyd is pointing Celtic at a long-format 3-star. Long Island T won his dressage phase with a score of 38, went clean in show jumping and had 10 time penalties cross-country, where Boyd wasn’t pushing him.
At these trials, “I never try and go flat out. I use them as training,” said the Pennsylvania resident, who is aiming the horse for the American Eventing Championships in Kentucky next month.
“This was more of a fitness run. It’s good to win, but you can’t try and win every step. It’s more a building-him- up type of event.”
The Open Intermediate, which with 23 starters was bigger than the FEI 2- and 3-star combined, went to a delighted Jennie Brannigan on FE Lifestyle, a horse she has been touting.
After finishing on her dressage score of 30.20 penalties with no time faults cross-country, a challenge on such a warm day, an excited Jennie called U.S. Eventing Performance Director Eric Duvander, who is in Montana at the Event at Rebecca Farm.
Jennie Brannigan was all smiles as she took FE Lifestyle around the cross-country course at the New Jersey Horse Park, where she won the Open Intermediate section. (Photo © 2020 by Nancy Jaffer)
Lifestyle, she said, is “One of my really exciting ones coming up. I was planning to run him at the 4-star at Morven in the fall and God willing, if that went right, the way that horse is on cross-country, I would aim him at Kentucky next year. That’s what Eric and I talked about.
“He’s a really bold cross-country horse. He jumped around Fair Hill as a 7- year-old and ended on his dressage score. He’s quite a careful show jumper as well. In dressage, he’s a beautiful mover. That judge was judging pretty stiff; it was great to have Boyd’s horse…in the class to gauge off of the scores,” Jennie continued.
“Eric’s helped me completely change the way I’m riding him and it’s really paid off. He actually sat on him a couple of times, which was really great. I tend to be a little too sympathetic in my riding, going with the way the horses want to go, instead of saying, `No, be really through.’
“The quality of his connection is so much better and his brain is so much better since I’ve been putting him in the box and telling him exactly what to do.”
The German Sport Horse she got from Clayton Fredericks, who imported him five years ago, “is every bit of a chestnut warmblood, sensitive and very hot. He ends up winding himself up when I give him too much freedom, I realized. Normally, it would take me quite a bit to get him in the zone.”
This time, her work has paid off and “he was just all business at the beginning (of cross-country).
“I actually quite liked the course. The footing was fantastic,” the Pennsylvania resident said of the route designed by Morgan Rowsell at the facility in Monmouth County.
“He’s doing a good job of slowly building everybody back up,” she added about the test, where she finished two seconds under the 5-minute, 24-second optimum time.
Like Jennie, Boyd was pleased with what the Horse Park had to offer. Both commented on the “fantastic” footing.
“The course design by Morgan was absolutely spot-on. It was a great event, I’m glad we went.”
Of Morgan, a trustee of the Horse Park, Boyd said, “He’s got a real good feel for the property. It had good flow, every question you can imagine; turning questions, accuracy questions, bravery questions. I felt like the horses finished with their ears pricked and really felt like I’ve learned something.”
A determined Boyd Martin has his eye on his spot aboard Long Island T. (Photo © 2020 by Nancy Jaffer)
The event went even more smoothly than the June Horse Trials, which were well-regarded.
“Ellen Clarke (a trustee) and the horse park board really worked hard on refining our Covid plan,” said Morgan. “We were much better prepared.”
When he designed the course, Morgan took into consideration, “Nobody had a legitimate spring to get ready,” since the U.S. Equestrian Federation stopped all competitions from March 20 to June 1 because of the pandemic.
“I went for a very straight-ahead, very basic, approach to the design, knowing that at the low end of the spectrum, it was still going to be hard for some riders, because at the end of the day, they’re not ready.”
“I was happy to see the horses comfortable with the footing, comfortable with what they’ve been asked and now they’re ready for whatever the next step is.”
Boyd said, “I take my hat off to the New Jersey Horse Trials.These events that are running have every reason in the world to cancel. They have to abide by all these new rules and I can’t tell you how grateful the competitors are that the organizers are putting on these great shows with this added extra headache of dealing with the Corona plague.”
