A pre-Burghley toast to the magical Murphy Himself – the daredevil grey that famously took out strides at the world’s biggest fences
The exuberant eventer captured the public’s imagination with two of Britain’s greatest riders at the helm – bursting into the public eye with a win at Burghley at the precocious age of seven. In this piece from the , archives, Madeleine Silver charts Murphy Himself’s rise to stardom
There was a moment at the inaugural World Equestrian Games (WEG) in Stockholm in 1990 when the crowd held its breath for just a little longer than is usual, even for a championship. Ian Stark and Murphy Himself were approaching the Road Crossing – rails followed by a towering hedge with a drop – when it became clear that Murphy would be bouncing what others were riding as a long stride.
“As we came down the hill, I slowed him right down and he then launched into the middle of the road and I thought, ‘Yikes, we’re not going to fit in here.’ And then we were off again. I still remember the feeling. It was kind of thrilling, but it left you slightly speechless for a few seconds,” recalls Ian over 30 years on. “It was all so easy for him.”
It was this cavalier approach to fences – discarding extra strides or taking off when others might have floundered – that captivated the public’s imagination.
“Even at a one-day event when the commentator said, ‘Next to go is Murphy Himself,’ you saw people running to the nearest fence to get a close-up view of him jumping. He had a huge fanbase,” says Ian.
There was also his grey coat that helped secure his place in the consciousness of eventing fandom – as well as the fact that he’d started his career with another of Britain’s eventing icons, five-time Burghley winner Ginny Elliot.
“I go to America a lot for teaching and most people don’t remember any of my horses, except for Murphy,” Ian reflects fondly.
Finding Murphy Himself
It was 1982 when an advert in the pages of Horse & Hound caught the eye of Ginny’s mother Heather Holgate.
“He was allegedly broken in, but it was quite a tentative showing of him in the outdoor school,” remembers Ginny about her visit to see him at Ann Verdon-Jones’ yard on the Surrey-Sussex border, where she was not deterred by him running out of some cross-poles.
“He had really big paces, and we’d just sold something so I thought, ‘Oh well, he’s a four-year-old, he might be useful to buy, and I can always sell him on.’”
On getting him home, Murphy’s somewhat temperamental personality began to emerge.
“The grumpy side of him was pretty evident. I soon learnt that you absolutely couldn’t touch him with a schooling whip,” says Ginny, who had a 10-inch cross-country whip specially made to use on his shoulder. “We learnt in the early days that you asked him, you didn’t tell him.”
Ginny soon set about trying to teach him to shorten his stride.
“He’d bounce one-stride doubles and put one stride in two-stride doubles and so we spent a huge amount of time and patience doing little grid with him. There was a lot of cooing and encouragement that went on in his direction. But I think the experience of dealing with something super-talented, but difficult, was a great lesson.”
At the early novices, there were hairy moments. At one, Ginny found herself pulling with both hands on one side of the reins in an attempt to slow him down, as he made a beeline for the lorries halfway round the cross-country.
“I then realised that the bit had actually gone through his mouth, which of course made him go even faster. We luckily ended up at a 15ft-high hedge, so he stopped. I got off, rearranged the bridle and carried on.”
When he won his first three-day event at Avenches, Switzerland, in the spring of 1984 with seeming ease, his young talent was clear and by the summer of 1986, he’d clinched the three-star (now four-star) at Le Touquet in France.
“The dressage was getting better and better, and he began to enjoy it. And so, I just thought I might as well go to Burghley that autumn,” says Ginny, realising how ambitious that now sounds.
It was here that a vetting revealed that he was, in fact, a year younger than the eight-year-old Ginny thought he was, a revelation that’s since been confirmed by his breeder Jack Higgins in Co Down.
“I remember thinking, ‘Oh well, never mind,’” laughs Ginny.
But it is this twist that makes Murphy’s tale all the more remarkable – claiming the title at just seven years old. It was Ginny’s fourth consecutive win at Burghley, but this one felt different.
“It was, shall we say, a big surprise,” she says. “I went there thinking that it would be a great experience, but I didn’t expect him to win it.”
“Pressed” into a swap
Murphy Himself had cemented his place on the radar of the eventing fraternity, but at Badminton in the spring of 1988, it was clear his often-unpredictable boldness was showing no sign of waning. When he leapt off the Ski Jump, the slight Ginny was catapulted out of the saddle and left with a broken ankle.
There was a growing sentiment that he might be better suited to a stronger rider, but Ginny remembers feeling “rather pressed into that decision by my family. I was actually very against moving him on even though I think he was too strong for a woman.”
Despite a tempting offer from abroad, it was decided that Murphy should go to a British team rider and it was agreed that Ian would be the obvious choice, with Murphy being swapped for his 16hh Griffin.
“I definitely followed Murphy’s journey after he went to Ian, but it was with joy and sadness, a mixed bag in a way,” reflects Ginny. “I’m thrilled that Ian reaped the rewards with him, because he was an exceptional horse and I loved him to bits. He showed that no horse is perfect, but if you are patient, in the end you are rewarded.”
When Ian came to try Murphy at Ginny’s base, what he saw didn’t match the impressive gelding he’d followed since he was a novice.
“I was less than impressed,” admits Ian. “In the outdoor school, he was lazy and [Ginny’s trainer] Dot Willis asked if I wanted spurs. I remember thinking, ‘This isn’t the horse I’ve seen competing. What’s going on?’
“But he was a bit like that at home; he was laid-back and probably bored with dressage because he knew it all. He was beautifully schooled, though – Ginny had done an incredible job – and I couldn’t resist the temptation of the challenge.”
Ian’s instinct was rewarded when he clocked a victory at Boekelo that autumn and fifth at Badminton the following spring. At WEG in Stockholm, when Ian and Murphy rode alongside Ginny and Griffin on the British team, a last-minute request for Ian to lend his spurs to an Austrian rider and the subsequent delay to their test meant Murphy had lost his edge by the time they got into the arena. But the pair still came away with team and individual silver, with their cross-country round restoring Britain’s hopes of a medal after team-mates faltered.
When Murphy came to Ian, he was in a Citation bit (“Ginny had found that was about one of the only things she’d had a chance of stopping him in,” Ian says), but apart from on one occasion at Boekelo when he was “completely carted on the steeplechase phase” Ian was keen to ditch it.
“At whatever level we ride, we all want a different kind of contact and for me, the Citation didn’t give the kind of contact I liked. So I experimented and eventually ended up using a cherry roller American gag with a combination noseband.
“The strength of Murphy didn’t scare me but when he got into gear, he lent on you so badly, the steering often went out the window. On the steeplechase at Boekelo in October 1988, he wasn’t really listening to me, galloping with his head leaning on the bit and I do remember thinking, ‘Yikes, I don’t like that.’
“People always went on about me riding fast but I was never out of control, apart from with Murphy when there were definitely shades of that at the beginning.”
In contrast to his fierce competition persona, at home Murphy “was like a big lamb”, says Ian. He was turned out with fellow grey Glenburnie (“they got on so well, they almost ate off the same blade of grass”) and in the field through the winter “any other horse could make a face at him and he’d just give up his food”, Ian laughs.
“A sad old day”
It was at the Barcelona Olympics in 1992 that time was called on his career when he was unsound on the final day, following a gruelling cross-country round in the heat.
“I had hoped he had become older and wiser, but as soon as he came out of the start box on the steeplechase, I knew he was his old self,” Ian said afterwards, later reflecting on Murphy’s insistence “to go like the clappers” and his resistance to spare himself.
But even before it was clear he couldn’t continue at the Games, he’d told Michael Calvin at the Daily Telegraph: “That’s the last time I’ll ride him across country. He doesn’t owe me anything. There’s not a human being who can match up to him. It’s a sad old day, isn’t it?”
Murphy had been a lesson in strong horses for Ian.
“He taught me that my job was to set a horse up for a combination on a cross-country course and then let the horse work out what it wanted to do with its feet,” he says.
And for all the unnerving moments that this soaring grey gave, rewatching footage of him at that Road Crossing in Stockholm is still a reminder for Ian that he was one of a kind.
The team-mate’s view
“When Ginny won Burghley in 1986 on him, it was probably the first time that I noticed Murphy,” says Karen Dixon, who rode on a team with the gelding at the 1990 Stockholm WEG, as well as the 1992 Barcelona Olympics.
“He didn’t look like the athlete that he was – he seemed quite ordinary and plain, but my God that horse had an engine, athleticism and courage. It was second to none.
“And I think the reason he was so amazing with Scotty [Ian Stark] was that he just let him be himself and had the confidence to do that. They had that special bond and Scotty totally trusted him, which meant he could let him run and do those amazing jumps.
“Out of all my years of eventing, the one person jumping a fence that sticks in my mind is Scotty and Murphy at Stockholm bouncing the Road Crossing. When I stood on the landing side with my arms in the air, there was no way you could see any tips of any fingers – it was enormous.
“It’s all very well saying Murphy did it, but he then had the athleticism and belief in himself to stand on his feet, with Scotty pulling him round to the right through the trees. I’ll never forget that.
“Murphy was a quiet person, but underneath that sheep’s clothing he had an engine in there. He came across as a sweetie, but then turned into a roaring lion when he was out doing his stuff.”
Murphy in numbers
- 16.1hh grey gelding by Royal Renown, out of Carleen
- 1979 – the year he was foaled, a year after it was officially recorded on his passport
- £2,500 – the price that Ginny Elliot paid for him in 1982
- 5 years old – the age Murphy was at his first three-day-event at Avenches in Switzerland, which he won
- 1st – at Burghley in 1986 with Ginny Elliot
- 2 – silver medals at the Stockholm WEG in 1990
- 2nd – at Badminton in 1991 with Ian Stark
- 1 – Olympic performance, at the 1992 Barcelona Games
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A graduate from Durham University, Madeleine joined H&H in 2011 and became Features Editor — producing content across the magazine and website, including the popular inside back cover article ‘The horse that made me’ and the weekly ‘The best of my fun…’ interview. She has written on topics as diverse as hay making and headcams, to hot totty in the horse world and circus horses. Madeleine now works as a freelance feature writer for Country Life, The Telegraph, Horse & Hound, cntraveller.com, The Spectator and The Field, as well as writing obituaries for The Times.