Flash Cooley

The recent Millstreet four-star long runner-up offers a powerful package in a tiny body - and he loves a snooze. Pippa Roome finds out more

- Pippa Roome

RIDER GEMMA STEVENS

“I STARTED riding ‘Casper’ at the end of his eight-year-old year. He’d done plenty of three-stars with his previous rider Liz Halliday-Sharp and gone very well, but he’d had a patchy four-star start with a couple of falls.

“I felt like it was important for us to establish ourselves as a partnership before moving up to four-star, so I spent the first year being very careful, doing intermediates and three-stars and making sure he was super confident.

“He used to be a little worried about jumping a ditch, so I spent a long time gaining his confidence with that and getting to the point where he wasn’t holding his breath.

“At the end of that year we stepped up to four-star, then last season was about consolidation and he was fantastic. The only blot on his record was when I made a mistake at Bramham so I walked home as I didn’t see the point in going all the way round after I’d made an error at fence four.