www.sandhavenperformancehorses.com
Sandhaven Celebration and trainer Lisa Harding
“Even as the settlements grew, the wealthiest property owners would return to England for the social season and purchase the finest British livestock for export to their properties in Australia. These imports were crossed on the best of the station horses, improving the offspring with each generation. From this small, local environment, a magnificent performance horse evolved—clever and fast, with a comfortable ride and incredible endurance.”
Kellee explains that she found the Australian Stock Horse when she was looking for the ideal mount for Polocrosse, a sport that requires incredible stamina as well as speed, agility, and a good mind. “I had come to Polocrosse from cutting, and was a dyed-in-the-wool Quarter Horse advocate. I loved their catty quickness and good minds, but found that my cutting-bred Quarter Horses lacked the stamina for upper level play at a tournament and by the end of a weekend they were flagging, no matter how fit I tried to get them. In an effort to find more endurance I tried running-bred Quarter Horses and Thoroughbreds, but although those wonderful athletes could hold up to the physical demands of polocrosse, their minds struggled with the mental pressure involved in a ‘game of strategy, played on clever horses.’ Since Polocrosse originated in Australia, I wondered what horses they used and began to study the blood lines of the ‘Best Horse’ champions in the top carnivals, or tournaments.”
“I soon realized that the Australian Stock Horse offered exactly what I was looking for—an extremely agile athlete with great stamina and a calm, trainable mind. It was not until 10 years later that I was afforded the opportunity to stand the wonderful Waldron’s Starman, an Australian Stock Horse sire imported to America by John and Liz Gleeson. These ex-pat Australians wanted to establish a home-bred top-quality Polo string based on Stock Horse stamina and athleticism. I was lucky to have played with and been a member of the Lone Star Polocrosse Club, the dominant polocrosse club in America for a decade. Lone Star is famous for the quality and depth of our horse pool. When it became known that I was planning to build a breeding program