Margie McLoone

AMERICAN event rider Liz Halliday-Sharp has enjoyed an excellent season in Europe with her string of mainly Irish-bred horses, the vast majority of whom carry the Cooley prefix.

The California native is moving base for the winter from her Chailey Stud Equestrian Centre in east Sussex to Ocala, Florida, bringing with her a couple of horses to compete and a number of younger ‘Cooley’ horses which she and Richard Sheane consider suitable for the American market.

While Halliday-Sharp has been keen to promote the joint venture, Cooley Horses International, saying the first consignment will be on site from later this month, Co Wicklow-based Sheane, while confirming the link-up, is playing things down for the present.

“I don’t want to put a timeline on this,” he said. “Liz and I have identified horses we think are suitable for competition in the States so that rather than wait on American riders to come to us, we are going to go to them.” The horses will be extensively vetted before shipment to the States.

Late last month, Sheane announced the sale to New Jersey’s of Sinead Halpin of Caherconree Cooley, a daughter of OBOS Quality 004, who was the top-placed mare when third in the four-year-old young event horse class at Dublin in August. Bred in Co Kerry by James Griffin out of a Puissance mare, the bay was ridden at the RDS by Cooley stable jockey Katie O’Sullivan.