United States Eventing Association

Hard Work, No Regrets: 8-Time World Equestrian Brands USEA Rider of the Year Boyd Martin Reflects on Life and Career

When asked if he could go back in time and give the younger version of himself one piece of advice, eight-time World Equestrian Brands USEA Rider of the Year Boyd Martin says he wouldn’t change a thing.

“I think the decade I spent in Australia, slogging away with rough and ready horses and working like a dog, learning off Heath Ryan, who was my mentor as a kid, built me into who I am today,” he reflected.

“I left home when I was very young. At 17, I left school and became a working student, and at the beginning, it was not very glamorous," he continued. "I think the thousands and thousands of hours of work that I put in while in Australia actually makes me appreciate my time here in America. It was a blessing, in a weird kind of way, to get started on my career in Australia. At the time, there was not much money in it, the quality of the horses was pretty low, and the events were a bit rustic, but in saying all of that, I learned to be a really, really good horseman.”

In 2007, Martin and his wife, international dressage rider Silva Martin, relocated to the United States where he came under the wing of Olympian Phillip Dutton, a move Boyd called a “huge turning point in his career.”

Since then, the Martins and their operation have undergone their fair share of ups and downs—from overcoming tragedy to building up their own home base at Windurra USA in Cochranville, Pennsylvania, and now raising a family. Through it all, Boyd credits the hard times for all of his successes along the way.

“In my career now, I am just desperate to ride the best of the best horses, but somewhere along the way, you’re going to get to a five-star, and it’s going to be pouring rain and muddy, and you’re going to lose your reins—things are always going to go terribly wrong. And I think at some point in your life, you have to learn how to grit through those things. When you look at, who I probably think is one of the greatest riders in American eventing, Phillip Dutton, whenever the going gets tough, you watch him ride cross-country even at the age of 60 now, and it's just remarkable. And while I think that is something that is inside of him, I also think that is learned behavior picked up over decades and decades of riding imperfect horses in imperfect conditions. That is how champions are made.”

Boyd himself was raised by two Olympians so he was no stranger to the concept of becoming a champion. His father, Ross Martin, was an Olympic cross-country skier, and his mother, Toy Martin, represented America in the Olympics as a speed skater. Despite his parent’s high-performance successes, however, his dad made a conscious effort not to place that pressure on Boyd as a young athlete—a parenting maneuver that Boyd has adopted himself for his three sons, Nox, Leo, and Koa.

“Sport was a huge part of our family,” reflected Boyd. “I remember, however, that my dad took all of the trophies and awards in the house down. There wasn’t one accolade or one trophy that reminded us of his success. Looking back on it, I thought it was quite weird then, but I think he was trying to do it to make sure that his kids didn’t feel like there was a huge amount of pressure on them to follow in his footsteps.”

He has made some adjustments to his lifestyle to ensure that he can be an active, present father, even in pursuit of his high-performance dreams.

“Anyone who has kids will know what I am talking about. It’s a wonderful new chapter in your life,” shared Boyd. “To be really, really good at this sport, you have to be somewhat selfish, and before kids, I just used to work and work and work until it was dark and never be home on the weekends. I was just obsessed with competition and going from one show to the next. Now that I have three kids, I want to be wrapped up at the stable by four or five in the afternoon when the kids are home from school. I want to take them to their sports or if they want to have a ride, I want to make sure I have time to do that. I am still away quite a bit, so I often feel a bit guilty, but I think the key is that every spare moment outside of riding is spent devoted to your kids.”

The Martins’ two oldest boys, Nox and Leo, have recently started expressing an interest in horses, and their fun and antics can be seen on Boyd’s social media profiles online, but Boyd doesn’t want to influence what the future might hold for them.

“My kids can do whatever they want," he said. "If they want to do a sport or they want to be a genius—they can be an accountant, I don’t really care as long as they’re good at it,” he noted. “I’m trying to steer away from putting any sort of pressure on them to feel like they have to prove themselves at this sport in order to live up to mum and dad.”

Boyd keeps his life simple these days. His daily at-home routine includes an early wake-up, a workout, riding through the day, hanging out with his family in the evenings, and then off to bed before repeating it all again. He laughed thinking back to how that part of his life has shifted so much over time.

“I used to always be the life of the party,” he said with a chuckle. “Thank God they didn’t have social media back in Australia at the time because I was wild. But, I think you only learn through mistakes, and what I learned from that phase of my life is that I needed to be more focused. My focus wasn’t always on the job then. I was an athlete, and I could pull it off, but I would go out all night and then ride five horses at a show without sleeping and I thought that was pretty normal. I could never consider trying to do that now. You know, six or seven years ago I started getting hurt a lot. Every time I fall off, I break something. I just came to the realization that my body was my avenue to make income and achieve my goals in this sport, so I had to be the best version of myself. I don’t think I really had that mindset until I turned 40, but jeez I had fun back then.”

Boyd noted that he feels keeping a level of entertainment in your life is imperative when you are working as hard as most high-level eventers do each day. His source of entertainment has shifted over the years, but he acknowledges that riders need to have fun along the way to avoid burnout.

“You spend thousands of hours practicing and training in the cold and the wet and the rain, and you can't live like a monk! But, you want your career to span decades, so you have to find the balance between having fun and then slowly evolving and becoming more professional. My life now is much more focused and dialed in, but it’s not like I am not having fun anymore. Just as you get older, your definition of a good time changes slightly.”

Now, as Boyd serves as a mentor for many young riders who pass through his program as riders and working students, he finds himself looking back often on his experiences at their age working for Ryan back in his home country.

“I just remember looking at Heath, and I thought, ‘This guy is larger than life!’ He was definitely my idol– he’s such a hard worker and a great horseman, but I also used to think he was just old as well,” he said with a laugh. “There were 13 of us working at the farm he had and a couple hundred horses, and we were just wild, young kids, and now I sort of calculate how old Heath was, and I am the same age now as he was then, and these guys working for me are about the same age I was!”

He thinks about the ways the sport has changed and evolved over the years, but what has seemed to stay consistent is the amount of work required to make it to the top, which is an experience he is proud to provide to the riders who work with him.

“The people that work for us seem to stay forever, even though it's not very glamorous work,” he continued. “But, there are a lot of people who come here and are overwhelmed because we work hard from 6:30 in the morning to 6:30 at night with no breaks, six days a week. In this era, it can be hard finding individuals who have that sort of drive and passion, and it's not for everyone, but you come here, and you get a bit of a university degree, and I hope that when they graduate here, they go on to greatness.”

All those long days have paid off for Boyd in the past few years, with 2024 being no exception. He had 59 top-3 placings and 29 FEI completions, 10 of those resulting in a top-3 finish, across the season, and he was the highest-placed rider at the 2024 Paris Olympic Games. Those successes led to an overall score of 278 points on the World Equestrian Brands USEA Rider of the Year Leaderboard, but he was quick to note that he might not have been the recipient last year.

“I truly think Liz Halliday would have won that title in 2024 had she not had her accident last August,” he said. “I want to acknowledge that even though my name is at the top of a board, there was a very high chance that it would have been Liz’s year last year.”

Receiving any award is special, but for Boyd, he finds that this award has a bigger meaning than just being named Rider of the Year.

“It’s a wonderful award, but it's more of a reflection of the horses that you have put the work into, the staff that are around you helping you along the way, and the owners who have backed each one of these horses through the year," he said. "I am very proud of receiving this award, but to me, there are all these little goals that I have through the years, and I think receiving this award is just a culmination of all of those little challenges that I set for myself.”