Just after 1 a.m. on May 31, the rolling hills of True Prospect Farm in Chester County lit up as a fast-moving fire raced through a barn housing 11 show horses.
Stable workers pulled four to safety, but Neville Bardos, a big chestnut contender for the 2012 Olympics, was trapped in his stall.
With hay and straw ablaze, firefighters thought it too risky to try to save him. Neville's Australian-born trainer, Boyd Martin, had different ideas. He briefly argued with the fire crew, then broke past and ran into the burning barn.
"I held my breath as deeply as I could - I couldn't see anything, but I remember hearing a gurgling," Martin said. "[Neville] was cooped up in a corner and I reached out and found his shoulder and then I found his neck. I got my hand around his neck collar but couldn't move him. He was panicked."
At that moment, Martin's friend and the barn's owner, Phillip Dutton, emerged through the smoke. With Dutton pushing hard from behind, they managed to drag Neville down the aisle and into the crisp May air.
"If I had left it another 30 seconds," Martin said, "it would have all been all over."
With Neville's lungs and airway heavily damaged by smoke, there was no thought that night of whether the horse Martin had named for an Australian gangster would ever compete again - only whether the vets could keep him alive.
Remarkably, the 13-year-old with two white socks and a big white blaze on his face not only resumed competing but was recently awarded the sport's highest honor: Horse of the Year, chosen by the United States Equestrian Federation. Another horse, Sjoerd, shared the award.
Martin, who rode Neville to seventh place in the world's most important cross-country races, the Burghley Horse Trials in England, just three months after the fire, wasn't surprised.
"What that horse did on and off the competition stage last year, I couldn't see a horse in the world that could beat him," he said.
A USEF spokeswoman agreed.
"If he'd gone to live in Boyd's backyard for the rest of his life, the story would have had a happy ending," said Joanie Morris. "But to jump around one of the toughest competitions in the world, that's remarkable."
Six top show horses died in the Memorial Day weekend blaze, which Chester County fire officials say started accidentally near a hay steamer in the center of the barn. Of the five that were rescued, Neville was among the worst off.
Caitlin Silliman, who works for Martin as an assistant rider, was asleep in an apartment above the barn when she and her two roommates heard the horses whinnying and shaking in panic.
They raced downstairs to open as many stall doors as they could, but the horses were too scared to move. They dragged out four before Martin arrived.
"The whole thing lit up very quickly," recalled Silliman.
Her own horse, Catch a Star, suffered burns over 50 percent of her body.
Neville, she said, was "really lucky" to escape serious burning. Silliman was even luckier; her apartment shared a wall with the hayloft.
The horse's worst injury was to his upper airway and lungs, said Samantha Hart, the veterinarian who saw him for almost two weeks at the University of Pennsylvania's New Bolton Center. He then was treated in a hyperbaric oxygen chamber at Fair Hill Equine Center.
Hart said the horse's injuries could have ended his career, but "he's definitely a fighter. He's an amazing horse."
That's hardly the way anyone would have described Neville when Martin bought him for $800 as a washed-up 3-year-old racehorse destined for the slaughterhouse - his first brush with death.
"I thought he looked like a real athlete," said Martin, who planned to train him as a jumper and sell him.
But the horse turned out to be a handful and a "wind sucker," a bad habit in which horses bite and chew on whatever they can get their mouths on and suck up air, which can cause colic.
"I was stuck with him," said Martin, who named him after another hothead, a notorious Australian gangster.
Silliman is more blunt: "He's wild. A lot of the girls at the barn won't even walk him. He gets spooked and runs and tries to buck you off. He's a very unpredictable horse."
But he's also fast and strong and a hard worker. Neville's sport, eventing, consists of three parts: a cross-country obstacle course, show jumping, and dressage. Slow on the track, Neville rockets around the open fields of a cross-country course.
"I'm sure he was put on this earth to do it," said his trainer, who sold him to a 10-member syndicate in 2010 for $150,000.
Dressage is his soft spot. The series of controlled movements requires elegance, precision, and suppleness, qualities that don't mesh with Neville's exuberance.
"He's always been overenthusiastic at everything he does," Martin said. "He almost tries too hard to please."
After a rough start, Neville started winning events and was short-listed for the 2008 Beijing Olympics. In 2010, he was named to the U.S. team for the World Equestrian Games and ended up being the highest-placed U.S. horse.
Now Martin and his wife, Silvi, a dressage trainer and rider, are waiting to hear about this summer's Olympic Games in London, which will commemorate the centennial of the equestrian event. Martin had been a contender for the Australian team for many years but now will try for a berth with the United States.
"That's the pinnacle of our sport," he said of the Olympics.
And riding to gold atop his miracle horse, he said, "would be huge."
