Murray Remembers Howard Bender

Murray Remembers Howard Bender

October 1, 2015
 
LAUREL, MD - Larry Murray, who trained for the late Howard Bender and his wife, Sondra, for nearly 30 years, said Bender’s death earlier this week was “a real shock.”
 
“I had just seen him last Thursday,” Murray said.
 
Bender and his late wife, who operated one of the Maryland’s most successful and largest racing & breeding stables, had been active in Maryland racing since 1983 and had been honored by the Maryland Horse Breeders Association in 2001, 2002 and 2003 as Breeders of the Year.  The winners of more than 500 races and more than $14 million in purses, the Benders also bred and/or owned the winners of numerous Maryland Million races.
 
"Whenever we went to Saratoga we had a ball, and going to Kentucky to buy or sell horses was a lot of fun," Murray said. "They were just great people to be around. I was telling my wife last night that, at the funeral service [today], I bet everybody in that room is going to think to themselves how lucky we were to have them in our lives. They were just...they were special people."
 
For Murray, the question now is what’s next?
 
“I’ve got 19 at the track and we probably have another 30 at the farm,” said Murray, referring to the Bender’s farm, Glade Valley, near Frederick. “We have a crop of weanlings, there’s 10 of them, couple of layups out of training, and we bred 16 mares this year.
 
“But we have already started an exit strategy. I sold three yearlings at Keeneland last week. The rest of the yearling crop is selling at Timonium next week, so we weren’t going to have any 2-year-olds coming into the stable next year. We were phasing it out. I have a bunch of mares that are selling in the fall in Kentucky, and we’ll sell some more in January.”
 
When asked what his favorite recent memory was of training for Bender, Murray said it was London Lane winning the Colonial Cup (G2) in June of 2013.
 
“The boss was already starting to have some memory issues, but I called him the night when London Lane won down in Virginia and he was out to dinner with some friends,” Murray recalled. “I called him right after the win and I’m screaming into the phone, ‘He won the Turf Cup,’ and I’m just screaming into the phone and then I lost the connection and couldn’t get him back on the phone. So I called him the next day when my wife and I were driving home and the first thing he said to me was, ‘How’d the horse come back?’ So he remembered and that was a thrill.”
 
Murray trained several stakes winners for the Benders including La Reine’s Terms, Snow King, Promenade Girl, Secret River and Foufa’s Warrior.
 
“One of the best broodmares we had was Foufa,” Murray said. “She was a goldmine. She had five stakes winners, and now she has some daughters that are producers. I would say she was probably the Bender’s Blue Hen.
 
According to Murray, Bender will be represented Oct. 17 at Laurel on Maryland Million Day by Maryland’s Love, a 2-year-old daughter of Not For Love who won at first asking Sept. 18.