'King's Theatre - Be My Native is a lovely cross to have on the dam's side of this filly's pedigree' - looking forward to the Derby Sale

Volkswagen is currently running an advertising campaign celebrating 50 years since the marque launched the Golf onto the global car market. 

Various iterations of the company's iconic hatchback are shown through the evolution of a family over that half-century from the first model, which was sold until 1983 – the year Corbiere made racing history – up to this year. We are on to the eighth generation, which includes hybrid and electric members of the Golf family.

Glancing around the car park at Tattersalls Ireland's sales complex in the run-up to the Derby Sale, which starts on Wednesday morning, Golfs of various guises and hues are dotted among the SUVs that now dominate. The Golf and the Derby Sale have moved with the shifting sands of time and are both creating history in their respective ways, with the premier store sale taking place for the 50th time.

There are families, human and equine, at this week's sale that are the second, third and fourth generations when talking people, and even further back for horses when looking at catalogue pages. All are continuing the legacy of quality and excellence that has been the hallmark of the sale since its inauguration at Ballsbridge on June 27, 1975.

A roll of honour cites multiple champions to have emerged from this sale over the past five decades, including an Irish Classic winner and a lengthy list of Gold Cup, Champion Chase and Grand National heroes.

Only two horses from the Derby Sale have won the Champion Hurdle, and one of those was bred by the Parkhill family; Granville Again, a full-brother to another Champion Hurdle winner in Morley Street. Both were bred by Marshall Parkhill. 

His son, the popular and jovial vet and breeder Ken Parkhill, along with his wife Louise and their sons Peter and Nicky have cultivated those pedigrees at the family's farm outside Trim that reach back further into the past than either the Volkswagen Golf or Derby Sale.

Granville Again: the 1993 Champion Hurdle winner was bred by Marshall ParkhillCredit: Unknown

Members of all three of those families form the Castletown Quarry Stud draft, lodged in Barn C, and, given the resonance of this week, with elegant displays of Derby Sale history around the grounds, talk naturally turns to Morley Street and Granville Again, who was sold by the Parkhills as a youngster. 

He was offered for sale as a store by Bert Allen and, 34 years on from that sale, when the Parkhills sold Baydon Star to Corbiere's history-making trainer Jenny Pitman, there are three descendants of the brothers' dam High Board in the Castletown Quarry consignment.

Ken Parkhill recalls how the success of the pair, trained respectively by Toby Balding and Martin Pipe, changed the family from mainly breeding and producing half-breds to the breeders of Cheltenham Festival and Grade 1 winners such as Bob Olinger, City Island, Ferny Hollow, Fury Road and Lovethehigherlaw.

"We weren't really into it at the time, we were all into half-breds," he says. "Luck is the big thing; they got into the right hands and the right people got them. It's unbelievable. When we sold Morley Street, it was a non-event of a pedigree, but it's gone from strength to strength as we went on. Luck played an important part in it and it's been a good family for us."

City Island is out of Victorine, an Un Desperado half-sister to Morley Street and Granville Again, and Fury Road is a son of Molly Duffy, by Oscar, and out of Victorine. Ferny Hollow is a grandson of Higher Again, who is a Strong Gale half-sister to the pair. It was a conscious choice to focus their efforts on growing that family, when it might have been easier and more lucrative in the short term to sell, but they had their eyes on a long-term solution.

Ballymore winner City Island at the Tattersalls Ireland Derby Sale

"We've had a long association with this sale and when the two boys won the Champion Hurdle we put ourselves under a good bit of pressure to keep fillies and to try and get them raced; we leased them or we kept even unraced fillies and bred from them," says Parkhill. 

"We could very easily have sold them and got good prices, but we kept them, and they're the foundation mares of all that has happened since."

In 1999 that family produced the first horse to sell for six figures at the Derby Sale, when a Roselier gelding out of Higher Again, a Strong Gale half-sister to the Champion Hurdle heroes, made 180,000gns to Noel Meade. He was one of eight lots from Castletown Quarry Stud sold at the Derby Sale, producing a total of 342,500gns and propelling the Parkhills' stud to leading consignor for the first time.

The following year Castletown Quarry was once again Derby Sale leading consignor and it has earned that position on four further occasions, with High Board's descendants City Island, Ferny Hollow, Fury Road and Lovethehigherlaw all contributing Grade 1 victories to the laurels of both Castletown Quarry Stud and the Derby Sale.

Wednesday's fourth lot is a Jet Away gelding out of Tasitiocht, a winning Oscar full-sister to Molly Duffy, dam of Fury Road, and a half-sister to City Island. Lot 125 is a Well Chosen filly out of Chiltern Hills, a winning Beneficial half-sister to Ferny Hollow and the Grade 2 winner Mirazur West, another Castletown Quarry Derby Sale graduate.

On Thursday they offer a gelding (330) from the first Irish crop of their neighbours', the Floods, sire Poet's Word and he is out of Pearl Diamond, a winning Arcadio half-sister to Highway One O One. His third dam High Ace is an unraced half-sister to Granville Again et al.

Mirazur West, a full-brother to Ferny Hollow, made €160,000 at the Derby SaleCredit: Tattersalls Ireland

Also on Thursday are two representatives of another prolific pedigree that has provided the Parkhills with success in the saddle. Ken won a bumper on Sharpaway, the fourth dam of lots 232 and 304, while Peter was in the saddle when Zenaide won her bumper. That Zaffaran mare is the dam of Grade 1 winner Bob Olinger and Listed winner Myska, dam of Grade 3 Shannon Spray Novice Hurdle winner Eabha Grace and of the Getaway gelding catalogued as 304.

Lot 233 is a Vadamos filly from the Parkhills' other pedigree, one that includes a horse whose place in racing's annals is enshrined.

In 1983, as Volkswagen launched the second generation of the Golf, a chestnut gelding with a broad white blaze jumped his way around Aintree and into history, as the first winner of the Grand National to be trained by a woman.

"That's a really old pedigree of ours," says Ken Parkhill of the bay half-sister to the Grade 2-placed Up The Straight. "We bred Corbiere and that pedigree goes back in our family even further, on my mother's side. 

"It was a pedigree they had for a couple of generations before Corbiere. It went quiet for a while but it has come back, and King's Theatre - Be My Native is a lovely cross to have on the dam's side of this filly's pedigree."

Like the Golf and the wider motoring landscape, National Hunt breeding and selling has undergone transformations over the years and in that time two main changes have produced a major impact at the sales.

"For a start, the Derby Sale used to be a lot of four-year-olds because that's what people wanted," says Parkhill. "The ITBA National Hunt Fillies Bonus Scheme has made a huge difference, and is a benefit to everyone. 

"Before it was brought in, there would be only a handful of fillies at the sale, but now, if I have a filly with size, scope and with broodmare potential, I'm very happy to bring her to a store sale.

Monet's Garden and Tony Dobbin on their way to Grade 1 success in the 2007 Melling Chase at AintreeCredit: Edward Whitaker

"In the past, if you had a filly foal it was really a year gone, other than for a very exceptional one, whereas now if you have a nice filly, be it a foal or a three-year-old, there's a great market for them."

Castletown Quarry's success at Tattersalls Ireland has been powered by the three families that successive generations of Parkhills have cultivated and nurtured but, as with Volkswagen, there is always a desire to innovate and one of the most popular horses the Parkhills sold at the Derby Sale was a pinhook, something the family has been involved in doing for a long time, with Scilly Isles Novices' Chase winner Baydon Star also a pinhook.

In 2001 triple Old Roan Chase winner Monet's Garden was sold by Castletown Quarry to his trainer Nicky Richards, for whom he would also win two Ascot Chases, the Melling Chase and the Liverpool Hurdle among 17 triumphs. But it is the decision to support the families who have populated Castletown Quarry for almost as long as the Derby Sale has been producing champions and the Golf ferrying families that have ensured the Parkhill family is still breeding champions more than 40 years after Corbiere's Aintree victory

Ken Parkhill says: "We've three main families we try to keep going. If we had sold them, we wouldn't be breeding now. I enjoy it, I love looking after foals and the challenge of getting mares in foal, it's a labour of love."

Tattersalls Ireland Derby Sale factfile

Where Tattersalls Ireland, Ratoath

When Wednesday and Thursday from 10.30am

Last year's stats From 372 offered, 300 sold (81 per cent) for turnover of €16,075,000 (down 13 per cent year on year), an average of €53,583 (down seven per cent) and median of €43,000 (down 14 per cent)

Notable graduates Honeysuckle (sold by The Glanvilles Stud, bought by Mark O'Hare for €9,500), Shishkin (sold by Goldford Stud, bought by Boyne Farm for €28,000), Energumene (sold by Moanmore Stables, bought by Tom Lacey for €50,000), Jonbon (sold by Church View Stables, bought by Paul Holden and Michael Shefflin for €140,000), Bravemansgame (sold by Richard Busher, bought by Colin Bowe for €85,000)

Read more about the Derby Sale

From Little Owl to Moscow Flyer to Honeysuckle - celebrating half a century of Tattersalls Ireland Derby Sale greats 

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