Sara Kozumplik Murphy laughs softly as she recalls what went through her mind walking up to the Burghley Bounce Bank in 2002.
“You have to remember, I was really young then, so honestly, everything about Burghley was a bit overwhelming!” she said. “That fence was absolutely enormous and to this day it’s the biggest thing I’ve ever seen on a cross-country course, and I have a lot more experience now.”
Sara Kozumplik Murphy and As You Like It tackling the Burghley Bounce Bank in 2002.
“I do remember Mark Phillips said, as we walked up this one, that if we weren’t going to ride this one properly that we might as well just reserve our room in the hospital, which wasn’t very comforting!”
In 2002, Murphy was a 23-year-old competing at her very first Burghley CCI**** on as You Like It, an off-the-track Thoroughbred who she’d ridden in her last years of Pony Club. “He was such a horse of a lifetime for me. He was such a cool horse,” she said of “Auggie.”
Murphy remembers that there were six Americans competing at the 2002 Burghley CCI****, including veterans Amy Tryon, Buck Davidson, Cathy Wieschhoff and Robert Costello. And that Phillips chose her to be the first U.S. rider out on course. “At the time, I thought, ‘Well, why the hell do I go first when there are so many experienced riders here?’ But now I realize why in hindsight why he did it—if I’d had to sit and watch the whole day, it would have been pretty terrifying! There were a lot of problems that year,” Murphy said.
In fact, 17 riders retired on cross-country and nine were eliminated on cross-country. Murphy was the 10th rider to start, and when she came into the 10-minute box (Burghley was still run in long format in 2002), there were no horses cooling out post-cross-country. “Max Corcoran and Jim Wolf and a bunch of people were there in the 10-minute box to help. They all just lied to me and told me, ‘Oh, they’re just cooling off really fast,’ but it was really that nobody had jumped around the whole thing yet!” she recalled.
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“Auggie was the first horse to finish the course that year, and I was always very proud of him for doing that. He was the first horse to jump that Burghley Bounce Bank. You came straight down a steep hill to Burghley Bank. There was a big ditch in front of the jump up, and it was meant to be bounce on the top and then dropping down off it. You just had to keep kicking, basically,” she remembered.
“I never really hear anything when I’m out on cross-country, but the other thing that I really remember about that jump is that when I landed, there was a little kid voice that said, ‘Well done, Sara!’ And I remember thinking to myself, ‘Yeah, no kidding! I can’t believe we got that done.’
Murphy and Auggie finished in 46th at that Burghley with a stop elsewhere on the cross-country, what Murphy terms “terrible dressage” and six rails down in show jumping. But in a year when 44 horses didn’t finish the event, completion was a victory in and of itself.
Auggie went on to jump around Burghley again for Murphy in 2003, as well at Rolex Kentucky CCI**** and the Badminton CCI**** (England). “He was the kind of horse that you don’t realize that riding at that level is hard. You’re like, ‘Why is everyone making such a big deal out of this?’ and then you get on the next horse and you’re like, ‘Holy moly,’” she said. Auggie, retired in 2005, is living in a field at her Berryville, Va., Overlook Farm.
It had been since 2009 that Murphy last completed a four-star and more than 10 years since she was last at Burghley, but this spring she rode Fly Me Courageous to 19th at the Rolex Kentucky CCI****. And she has Burghley back in her sights.
“My plan was always to get back there–I would have liked for it to have been a little sooner than it’s been. But the good thing about having that opportunity so young, I think, is that you get to jump around those big tracks and be among that kind of competition,” she said. “So then when you are more educated and have more experienced, you can go back and it’s not so daunting.
“I think if you wait a long time before you go over there for those kind of competitions, it just seems like a much bigger deal than if you just went out there and had a go,” she continued. “I think we’ve got to get riders over there at younger ages—who cares if they make a mistake or have a glance-off here or there. I think that’s the thing—yes, you’ve got to work hard on every phase, but it’s not like you have to wait until you feel over-prepared, like you’re Michael Jung, to go. Just get out and do it.”