I feel like it is way over the top because this is totally not how he is known.
And before I get called a fangirl… I did not know who Boyd was before the MB trial. I did not start following him on social media until very recently, to see the silly videos of his kids riding.
I think there are people reacting to this incident saying over the top stuff about him, one way or the other (both positively and negatively), who don’t actually know him.
And that’s what is over the top to me. All the extraneous commentary about him personally from people who don’t actually know him. It’s a lot.
I’m also struck by the continuing use of the phrase “power imbalance” when speaking about his large social media following. Of course he has a large social media following. So what? Up to this point, I have only seen that phrase used in a SafeSport context, to describe situations where professionals and trainers are acting in a predatory way towards minors or employees.
The first post on social media was stupid. But it wasn’t an example of anything predatory. It’s his property, there are rules for payment when schooling, and if he felt she deserved a ban, that’s his right. She chose to retaliate with her own post on social media, and that’s her right. The whole thing is a bad look for both of them. Neither is coming out of this looking like a winner.
We are generally in agreement. And to be clear: No matter how you feel as the landlord or land owner, you have to be professional-- more professional that Martin was in this instance. One always needs “restraint of pen and tongue.” It takes practice.
I don’t know the back story to their relationship. I know a tad (just a tad) of Cooper’s reputation here in Aiken. So I’m not qualified to speak to any of the context. I would assume there is some between them and/or Martin having a “bad hair day” as a landlord. Part of landlording (or boarding or Airbnb-ing or hosting people in your covered arena or on your farm is an ongoing, pain-in-the-ass series of boundary-setting exercises. She might have been the wrong late-payer in the wrong place at the wrong time because lots of other people were doing similar.
But I do think Cooper misread Martin’s emotional state and that was just stupid. If someone whose ongoing business you value is that mad, don’t have a back-and-forth in text message. I take umbrage at this only because I am just a few steps out of the 19th-century and have tenants who have no idea who to politely choose among the various media available. And I’m not unusual: If someone sent you a wall of text, wouldn’t you want to quote Marshall McLuhan too them and invite them actually have a conversation if the length or content of the text warranted it? Texting can make one feel spoken at, not spoken to or talked with. Should that be a big deal? No. But when someone with whom you are doing business is pissed, bring your emotional intelligence A-game or risk losing something you wanted… as Cooper did for just 30 days.
BTW, when Martin said she’d be welcome back after 30 days, I believe him. Why not? So long as someone is back on their side of the line, why not continue to do business with them?
These two posts are the whole ballgame for me. I, too, collect money for a living (among other things). If I ever spoke to anyone in my professional capacity in that manner, I would no longer have a professional capacity from which to speak. And that would be correct. (If I ever spoke to anyone in my personal capacity in that manner, I don’t think I’d have the relationship anymore, and that would also be correct).
Especially in writing, when all involved parties are perfectly capable of taking a walk around the block before responding if they are having such trouble with their emotions, there is no excuse for communicating in this manner. None. The best possible excuse available is “because I can”, and that’s called bullying. I don’t look up to bullies.
Personally, when I say “power imbalance,” I’m not talking about anything related to SafeSport. I mean it in the sense that sometimes one person just has way more influence or reach than another, and that affects how much impact their words have. In this case, Boyd’s large social media following and high profile in the industry give him a level of public power that I believe someone like Courtney doesn’t have.
That kind of imbalance means his words carry far more weight and can affect her reputation and business in ways she can’t easily respond to or control. It’s about how public perception is shaped unevenly when one person has a megaphone and the other doesn’t.
Boyd has a huge following and a big name in the sport, so when he makes a public comment, it carries way more weight and can seriously affect someone like Courtney who doesn’t have that same platform.
I agree both of them posting publicly wasn’t great, and it’d be better if these things stayed private. But I still think it’s important to recognize the imbalance here.
I don’t know the back story on the professional relationship between Boyd and Cooper, and I don’t know Cooper’s professional reputation.
I worked full time in the industry and ran a local boarding, training lesson business for years.
Chasing people for payment is a huge problem. Horse businesses in general, even a high end one like Boyd’s, run on a shoestring (overhead is more than 50% of revenue and difficult to control, profit margin is slim.) It doesn’t take very many slow pay or no pay clients before you’re running in the red.
What was infuriating for me was that the clients who were slow pay and no pay were invariably WAY more well off than I was. Worse was the people who made excuses, nickeled and dimed and argued over every line item on the bill. Ironically, the people who were the most conscientious payers were the people who worked for their money, not the people with generational wealth or lots of discretionary income. I have so, so, so many stories.
I suspect, from my one visit to Windurra, that the XC course and the gallop track are big revenue sources for the business. Boyd has to have them for his horses, the investment/infrastructure is already there, and not even Boyd can use the course all the daylight hours. I’m sure that the schooling fees don’t actually amortize the investment in the course (it’s spectacular); but I’m guessing it’s a significant revenue stream. So I think slow pay or no pay of schooling fees is a hot button issue.
It is incredibly hard to have a profitable horse business when you don’t come from money or don’t have a big chunk of money to buy a property. Even if you have sponsors buying your horses and sponsors providing you with equipment and tack, the day to day of maintaining a farm is absolutely brutal.
I am not defending the way it was handled. Not at all. He could have banned or suspended her, let his staff know and not taken it to social media at all.
But I do empathize with his frustration. And I also believe that there’s way more to this story.
I think that the Windurra policy could be better articulated. They ensure that you sign a release before riding. Why not require that payment be made before riding?
It would be completely crazy-making for anyone to have to personally observe who arrived at the property, count their horses, and follow up about payment afterwards. I think it was on the deleted post, but I think I remember him commenting that he had to follow up with eight people about payment that night. That’s non-functional.
I can understand why he snapped. I don’t agree with the way he spoke to, or about, his client.
He was mean to her. She was learning -apparently for the first time- that it upset him when she paid after the horses were unloaded back at home.
The part I found interesting was that he’s up to his eyeballs in debt. I often wonder how the finances work in these gorgeous sprawling operations with so many elite horses. Are the owners the main source of income etc. I was interested for him to say that facility fees are a big part of his income and that it’s leveraged. Appreciate the transparency.
I’ve known Courtney since she moved into my hometown when I was in middle school.
I am breaking my rule of “if you can’t say something nice…” because I know how she is.
She is extremely well spoken and professional on the surface. But there are reasons why she and Boyd have a strained relationship. There are reasons she hasn’t taken down her “help wanted” ad since she first placed it 30 years ago. There are reasons why the situation escalated to this level of inappropriateness.
If you bought a horse from her or took a lesson with her, you would have no issue. If you spent the last 30 years with her in your circle, you would have a very different opinion.
I hate this 
but I honestly feel bad for Boyd Martin. You try to be a good neighbor and get taken advantage of until you reach your breaking point.
ETA: also, this is nothing like the crazy braider situation. A better parallel would be the MB case, honestly. Being pushed ‘til you snap. No, snapping isn’t right, but my goodness, I had to move 1000 miles away to get out of this crazy.
Appreciate the insight.
It’s a shame if he sunk to the level of a bad actor. It’s really hard not to snap and just go nasty on someone who has been jerking your chain for some time. I know. I really wanted to go super nova on my neighbour who ripped me off. He richly deserves it.
But our village has under 500 people. I might win in the short run going off on him publicly (b/c TBH he has a LOT of enemies in the area and surrounds) and, believe me, I fantacised about a couple facebook posts that would have reached the entire community, but ultimately I’d look bad. People would eventually think differently of me b/c I was willing to be so immoderate in public. They would pull away, even if only a little. So, no matter how much I wanted to - and still want to - crash out over all this, I have to keep sticking to strongly-worded but professional telling off and setting boundaries and maintaining the modern equivalent of, ‘I said ‘good day’, sir!’ in my written and public responses to/about this person.
It sucks not to be able to vent your legitimate fury over someone’s super behaviour but, adults gotta adult; professionals gotta professional.
You just cannot be that indulgent.
This sums it up for me:
He may have harmed her reputation, but he’s harmed his own as well. Wasn’t worth the short-term feel good of acting out like that.
There is literally a HUGE sign at the entrance saying you must pay your schooling fees before leaving the property or you won’t be welcome back. HUGE. You can’t miss it, and it couldn’t be more clear. It’s been there for AT LEAST two years, and I’m sure longer.
One of my big problems with this story is that Cooper apparently has assumed long term that the sign didn’t apply to her. There’s no evidence that she and Martin had previously agreed that it didn’t apply to her and she could just pay later at her convenience.
I find the whole somebody else VenMos the money AFTER the schooling to be BS. Why weren’t the fees VenMoed before the schooling?
From the Windurra website:
Please tell me how you think the policy could be articulated more clearly
One thing that strikes me and totally off topic is that those prices seem really reasonable!
He knows he’s Boyd Martin. He knows he has an audience. He loves it, revels in it and regularly panders to it. He knew exactly what he was doing when he did it.
Very inappropriate and unprofessional.
And flipping generous as all get out.
Anyone can take their horse to Windurra any time. You can use whatever you need.
And unfortunately, that gets taken advantage of by some professionals who have made it a staple of their business.
All they freaking want is for you to compensate them for use of their facility, especially’when others are making money off it. And I honestly doubt they care when they are compensated, but they’ve had to tighten up the policy due to non-payment. So they make a very reasonable policy, yet some people don’t think it applies to them? Even when they are there multiple times a week schooling horses and giving lessons. “Aw shucks what do you mean I didn’t pay? I was going to get around to it…”
I’m not a Boyd fan girl. I don’t even know the man well. But this is not a new problem.
Did you not check the website yourself before you posted?
That doesn’t matter. The rules at Windurra are to “pay before you leave”. It is not his problem that she has to unload and put up horses , so do the other countless pro’s and other riders that somehow manage to pay before they leave.
Follow the rules… it isn’t hard.
Then you need to hirse someone to man the gates and take the money.
I think you are off base here.
I think he honestly doesn’t care all that much about his social media audience one way or another. Yes, he has a lot of female fans. He also has a lot of haters, for various reasons over the years. I remember when Crackerjack died. That was awful.
I do agree though that he knew what he was doing with the first post. Directing other local riders to call the authorities if they spotted her on the course during her ban? THAT was intentional. Possibly because there are more than a few people who laughed when they read that, and would be only too happy to stick it to Courtney.
I think it’s fair to call that tactic and the whole post inappropriate and unprofessional. But hey - so is paying late.
There was a lawyer commenting on a separate Facebook post about implied contracts, and how if something is let go with one person for an extended period of time (I.e. a year of paying this way) then it becomes a contract.
I know if I have a set of rules for my employees, but one in particular isn’t enforced over a period of time, then for me to decide after a year to enforce it? It needs to be appropriately addressed and outline the new expectations.
Wow. What this incident and thread have shown me, is that there is just as much toxicity and cliquishness in eventing as any other discipline. Eventers like to hold themselves as being friendlier than anyone else but in fact there just as much sniping and infighting. That people are getting a laugh out of a BNT telling them to call 911 on another professional about something that doesn’t involve safety of people or animals says a lot about those individuals.
By the way, that first post may have only been up for 20 minutes but it had plenty of reach in that time. I don’t follow windurra or Boyd (or any BNTs) but it showed in my Facebook feed. In fact I saw it after it must have been deleted because the comments were unavailable but the post was visible. Whatever specific beef they had with one another should have been handled privately.
He’s spent millions of dollars building a world class facility in a very expensive area of the US. It has been hugely beneficial for the local eventing and dressage communities and I’m sure it has been very beneficial for his and Silva’s horses/business as well but it’s not a necessity for an UL rider to spend that kind of money to build their own.
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