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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 H&H archives, Madeleine Silver charts Murphy Himself’s rise to stardom
Madeleine Silver

    • 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.

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