By Christopher Hector
With his win at the 2024 Kentucky 5* on Cooley Rosalent, Oliver Townend chalked up his 100thFive Star start, and his ninth win, making him the seventh most successful Five Star winner in history (so far that is!). Oliver started riding the Cooley horses in 2018, with Cooley Master Class at Kentucky and Badminton, and Cooley SRS at Badminton and Burghley. That’s almost a quarter (23.684% to be precise) of his Five Star starts since 2018, on a horse with the Cooley prefix.
Let’s look at the breeding of the horses from this remarkable power-house of eventing breeding. Master Class is more or less a history of modern eventing breeding in Ireland on the one pedigree. He is out of The Swallow, by that great Thoroughbred sire of eventers, Master Imp, out of a mare by the Holsteiner that dominated eventing breeding for three decades Cavalier Royale, and out of Milparinka xx (Kings Equity / Pardal).
Cavalier Royale
Cavalier Royale’s first eventer to compete internationally was the Two Star gelding, Pinopel foaled in 1990. Since then, he produced six at One Star, 24 at Two, 13 at Three, and 26 eventers at Four Star or above!!
Master Class is by the Belgian showjumper, Ramiro B, who is by the Holsteiner Calvini (Caretino), and out of the Belgian mare, Lully by Hanoverian stalwart Wendekreis.
Ramiro B
Ramiro B was one of the most popular eventing stallions in the UK with over 100 mares in 2016. He was made the first Ambassador of the BWP studbook because of the success of his progeny in showjumping and eventing. By 2015, Ramiro B had moved to second on the WBFSH Eventing Sires rankings, nine years later he is still ranked 21st.
Cooley SRS was also by Ramiro B, and out of a mare by the half-blood, Kiltealy Spring (Sky Boy xx) out of mare by the great Irish Draught, King of Diamonds.
Valent
Cooley Rosalent is by the Dutch showjumping stallion, Valent, by the Selle Français, Hors La Loi III, out of a Lux Z mare. On her dam’s side, the grey mare is royally bred, her Thoroughbred dam, Bellaney Jewel, was a winner of the Scottish Grand National. Well, I hate to ruin a good story but this bit is not true. Eagle-eyed editor of Breeding News, Jean Lewellyn did a little research and found that while Bellaney Jewel was a point-to-pointer, she was not a Grand National winner.
Rosalent is a full sister to Jewelent, who Phillip Dutton rode in the Lexington CCI4*-S.
Now when I started seeing the Cooley prefix proliferating in eventing results, my first thought was ‘wow, that must be a very successful stud’, but the truth is more interesting. Turns out that they are not breeders at all, but use the whole of Ireland as their stud farm and combine that with an uncanny ability to spot talent to produce their Cooley horses. The team, Richard Sheane and Georgina Phillips started their operation back in 2004 and they now have a client base that reads like a Who’s Who of international eventing.
I asked Georgina if she thought it was possible to spot an eventer on the basis of its breeding…
“No, is the short answer. We buy horses for eventing mainly from showjumping producers. They are horses that jump reasonably well and move well, but are not going to make the top grade. The long answer is a bit more complicated because, yes, you need blood, you need jump, but you need the attitude to be right. So there’s no fixed formula for breeding an event horse. You need to breed something that jumps, and from there, work out if it is brave enough, and has the right brain to go and do the eventing job.”
Oliver Townend and Cooley Rosalent (Photo: FEI- Solène Bailly)
Second at the World Champs as a young horse
“The Cooley horses that you see that are successful, there’s no fixed pattern in their breeding, they all carry a bit of blood, they have to be right in their brain and good to ride, and that for us, is what we look for.”
A number of the successful Cooley horses have European Warmblood in their pedigrees – do you look for that blood?
“Not really, the Warmblood crosses well with the Irish mares, there’s no doubt about that, but we don’t have any fixed impression of what we want. We like them to have the Irish in them because that makes them brave and sensible, which is not to say that we wouldn’t buy a horse that is all foreign that has been produced in Ireland. A lot of the reason the Irish horses are so good is because we have a good way of producing them here in Ireland. It’s a non-sterile environment and that’s very important. If you go to the continent, they don’t have the same set-up we have, the bogs they walk through, the muddy conditions. When they are just foals in Ireland, they get used to the natural terrain, they get to experience all types of conditions under foot, and that for us, is important.”
Another of Oliver’s Cooley stars, Masterclass
I was looking at your website, and even before your horses are backed, you lunge them over jumps…
“Yes. My partner, Richard is the ultimate horseman, and in Ireland with the hunters, they teach them to jump over big ditches and drains that way, because it is easier to teach them than with a person on them. It seemed like a natural progression for us, that we would school all our event horses, from the four-star horses to the four-year-olds, all go cross country on the lunge regularly, because it is so much easier to give them confidence and teach them when there is not anybody on their back. They don’t have to worry about balancing the rider, all they have to worry about it what is in front of them. It teaches them to think, so it is done in a very slow manner, they really thrive on it. Lots of people say lots of things about Cooley horses, you might have a horse that doesn’t do the best dressage test but they all go cross country and that’s the reason, because they are started that way.”
Are there any names on pedigrees that when you see them, you say, wow, I’m interested…
“We’ve been very lucky with Ramiro B, lots of good ones by him, so he’d be a favourite, but we are not fussy. If we see a horse we like, we like it regardless of who its mother and father are. Judge the horse, and not the breeding.”
After the Kentucky win, Ollie was full of praise for his latest star, Rosalent:
“She’s tough, and she definitely knows her job. She’s not mare’y, but she knows what she wants. She’s a very different personality to my other horse, Ballaghmor Class. She’s pretty feisty and needs managing that way, but it feels like she loves her job in all three phases, and that there are no chinks in the armour and no weaknesses. Any mistakes are greenness, or lack of experience. She’s one of the best horses I’ve ever ridden.
“The colour is lucky as well, I like gray horses.”
