Chapter Two: Early Ability
There’s plenty of experience behind Murray Andersen’s decision-making, because he’s bred and raced dozens of thoroughbreds over more than 35 years. That includes almost every horse from Dundeel’s first three dams. The best of them, before Dundeel, was his grand-dam Staring.
Staring – pronounced Starring but carefully spelt with seven letters in homage to the legendary Phar Lap - won the 1992 New Zealand Oaks and the national Filly of the Year title. A year later she won the country’s premier weight-for-age race over 2000 metres, now called the Zabeel Classic.
And it was to champion sire Zabeel that Staring left her first three foals, two colts and a filly, the results of a breeding partnership with Sir Patrick & Lady Hogan.
Murray explains, “We were going to race the filly, but even before she was broken in she spread herself in the paddock and couldn’t race. About that time Sir Patrick decided to cull some of his bloodstock and he offered me his half share in her, and that’s how I ended up with Stareel.”
High Chaparral’s $17,500 fee in 2008 was the highest Murray had ever paid and the colt was originally destined for the New Zealand yearling sales. Sometime in the autumn or winter of 2010 the Andersens made the life-changing decision to keep Stareel’s son and sell shares in him privately.
The Transtasman Partnership of family and friends that Murray Andersen and his sister Sharyn’s brother-in-law Tony Craig gathered to race Stareel’s High Chaparral colt sent him to Murray Baker’s Cambridge stable as a spring 2YO. That was in 2011, about 20 years after his grand-dam Staring had also entered Murray’s care.
Murray is a horseman of the old school, a former first-class cricketer who trains horses with the same focus and flair as the batsman and spin bowler he once was.
He soon worked out that he had another “traveller”, worthy of the trip across the Tasman Sea for the pressure tests of Sydney & Melbourne racing. It was a familiar trip for Murray who had already trained Group 1 winners in four Australian states.