Dan Edwards

Top Three Horses Trained

• Babytalk
  
• Second Spot
  
• Sniperr
  
• A Little Bossy

Dan Edwards grew up in Brisbane Queensland Australia and didn’t begin riding horse’s until he was fifteen years old because before that he was an aspiring and very accomplished musician, playing in Jazz Bands and in Wind Orchestras. He left home at the age of fourteen due to circumstances out of his control and lived with his music teacher Scott Strachan.  Scott introduced him to horse’s and Dan credits Scott for giving him a strong work ethic as Scott would have Dan work all day digging post holes etc before he was allowed to ride a horse, as that was his reward/treat for working hard.

It was Scotts’s brother Thomas Strachan who taught Dan about how to get inside a horses mind and it was Tom who had a lot of connections up north with the owners of some of Australia’s largest cattle stations and sent Dan to go learn from the people he learnt from. That’s when Dan met Geoff Murrell who managed Bulloo Downs (3.2 million acres) and asked Geoff for a full time job at the age of 15 but Geoff  said “no, you can have a job when you finish high school”.

So the day after finishing high school Dan got on a train and went to Bulloo Downs to start colts and would then travel around to various stations starting horses with great horseman like Simon Fraser, and “some of  these guys are unheard of because they weren’t interested in competition, just pure horsemanship”, says Dan.

Whilst up north Dan met and worked with one of Australia’s most respected horseman John Breckleman who was up there giving clinics and that’s when Dan became interested in Cutting. From there Dan worked for Mark Mulcahy who used to be Todd Graham’s two year old guy and Mark broke down the mechanics of cutting for Dan which helped him immensely. From there he spent a lot of time showing horses with Les and Maree Rudd and it was Maree who rang Darren Simpkins in America if he could find a job for Dan and that’s how he landed a job with legendary and Hall Of Fame trainer Winston Hansma.

At the age of 21 Dan turned up to The United States with $300 dollars, a bag of cloths and went straight to Winstons where he worked for 5 years, then went on to work for Sean Flynn for another 5 years, and Dan still treats them as his heroes.

When he left Sean’s, Sean made sure he had a full barn of 2 year olds and has been successfully starting colts for the public for several years now out of Weatherford Tx, with his wife Angie and son Dean. Dan has started some of our industry’s best horses, such as Babytalk, Second Spot, A Little Bossy, Sniperr, Flashy Talker, and the list goes on!