November 6, 2025 
Ask any rider from Spruce Meadows to Dublin and they’ll tell you: Conor Swail and Count Me In—known as “Crosby” in the barn—were never the combination you’d want following you in a jump-off.
“[Crosby] is very careful, naturally, and very quick as well. In the jump-offs, I have to be careful that I don’t go too fast, because he is always anticipating my next move,” Swail told the FEI in 2022, just one year after he’d taken over the reins on the bay Hanoverian gelding (by Count Grannus x Sunshine, Sherlock Holmes) from Canada’s Beth Underhill, who produced him.
Even then, Swail said, the gelding owned by Sandy Lupton and Mannon Farm and bred by Friedrich Luessmann in Germany was “turning into one of the best horses I’ve ever had.” And that was just before their subsequent 8th-place finish at the Longines FEI Jumping World Cup Final in Leipzig.
It turns out, Swail’s premonition more than came to pass. Always effusive in his praise of Crosby to the press, it is perhaps the Irish rider’s retirement post last month that best summed up his feelings.
“Crosby – A Horse I will always hold close to my heart. The best horse I’ve ever ridden,” Swail said simply in his October post announcing the gelding’s healthy retirement at the age of 18. “It has been such a privilege and an honour to have been your jockey these 3.5 years.”
Crosby will live out his days, appropriately enough, at Conall Murray’s Mannon Farms, in Swail’s hometown of Darragh Cross, in Northern Ireland. According to Swail, it was Murray that helped to bring the gelding—then 14 years old—to Swail’s string in 2021.
Back then, Crosby had taken some figuring out. Swail has said he could get stressed while traveling, and at times, suffered from a lack of confidence at higher heights. But as they grew to know and trust one another, Crosby soon became the horse that Swail could count on for the big occasions—even without having to jump many classes in the lead-up.
“His consistency level is incredible, and he is always there—so he gives me confidence too,” Swail told World of Show Jumping in 2022.
In his post, Swail says one of his proudest accomplishments with Crosby was jumping triple-clear for Team Ireland to win the Aga Khan Trophy and the Longines Nations Cup of Ireland at the Dublin Horse Show in 2022. It was the first home-turf victory for the Irish in seven years.
They also added their name to the prestigious ATCO Queen Elizabeth II Cup at Spruce Meadows in 2024 and won FEI World Cup qualifiers in Las Vegas (2023) Washington D.C. (2022), and Fort Worth, TX (2021). It all adds up to a total of nine Grands Prix wins, five of them at the 4* and 5* level.
Crosby’s sharpness and speed helped to propel the pair to finish on 56 podiums, ending their career together with an astounding 62% top 10 finish rate in 37 rounds at 1.60m+, according to Jumpr Stats. But it was their close bond, Swail says, that truly defined his success with the gelding he’s called his “horse of a lifetime.”
“I think he really trusts me a lot; he gives me a lot of belief and vice versa,” Swail said of Crosby after their win in the Prix des Communes Genevoises at CHI Geneva in 2022. “I do believe all good partnerships are unique, and I wish I had him a few years earlier. But I think I am really lucky to even have him at all.”
