Warmblood By Boyd Martin A Top Groom Makes All the Difference A


s my career has progressed over the years, I am forever reassessing how things are done with our top-level event horses. I think it’s important to al-


ways be critical of your own system and look for ways to continually improve it. If you’re not hungry to evolve you’ll end up treading water and gradually slipping behind the top competi- tors in this demanding sport. As a professional rider com-


peting at the elite level of the sport, what I’ve realized is I need to spend more time concentrat- ing on developing my horses. Over the past few years my busi- ness has grown, and when we purchased the farm I slipped into a pattern of juggling too many balls at once. I found myself only able to focus on becom- ing a better rider and trainer half the time, and the rest of the time I had to figure out how to pay for it all. This is cer- tainly different than other professional sports: a baseball or football player, for example, can spend 90 percent of his time improving his game. In order to make a top training business succeed, you


have to have a team of people working hard behind the scenes to make sure everything is organized and running smoothly. Over the last six months, I’ve been without a head groom and operations manager as I work to train and compete both young and world-class event horses. Filling this particular role will take a huge amount of pres- sure off me, lessening my workload and freeing up my time and energy to focus on training horses. A head groom is not someone who works for you for


six months and then moves on—he or she is someone who is with you for the long haul. To be quite honest, there are only a small handful of “super grooms” in the equestrian world. People like Emma Ford, Max Corcoran and Shannon Kinsley don’t just grow on trees! Basically your head person’s role is to take care of all the small details. I’m a true believer in the details being the big difference between winning and losing in this


66 September/October 2017


sport. If you look at the great professionals in three day eventing, people like William Fox-Pitt and Phillip Dutton, they have a head groom overseeing things and a small army of people taking care of the details. This organiza- tion leaves them more time to work on becoming even more awesome riders than they al- ready are. It’s impossible to compete


successfully in a horse sport of any discipline when you are distracted and you’re up against others who have the time and mental energy to give their all to their perfor- mance. Speaking from experi- ence, usually you get a medio- cre result if you haven’t put in


the time to prepare your horse and yourself for an event. If small details are missed, they can lead to unsuccess-


ful or even catastrophic outcomes. Your head groom’s role, I believe, is to simply take care of all these little things in the management of each horse, such as feeding, turnout, scheduling, staffing, shoeing and the list goes on, so that you as a rider are free to focus on training and competing. I believe I’ve finally linked up with that special person, who is starting here in August. It’s taken six months for this individual to land at Windurra and, if this relationship works out the way I hope it will, it could make a phenom- enal difference for my horses and my life as both a profes- sional and as an elite athlete. I’m looking forward to the freedom to focus on what I do best—riding and training these fantastic horses.


Four-star event rider Boyd Martin represented the United States at the 2010 World Equestrian Games and the 2012 Olympics. He and his wife Silva, a G.P. dressage rider, own and operate Windurra USA in Cochranville, PA. Learn more about them at www.boydandsilvamartin.com.


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