5 minute read
The rule of three
Ken Parkhill | Photo courtesy of Tattersalls Ireland
Aisling Crowe chats with Ken Parkhill whose family has bred three Cheltenham Grade 1 winners over the last three seasons, this year’s star performer being Bob Olinger
BOB OLINGER’s stroll to success with Rachael Blackmore in the Grade 1 Ballymore Novices Hurdle will, quite rightly, be remembered as part of the jockey’s history-making achievements at the 2021 Cheltenham Festival, but the six-yearold gelding was also adding to his breeder’s phenomenal record at NH’s theatre of dreams.
His success was the third year in a row that breeder Ken Parkhill has celebrated Grade 1 glory for one of his graduates on racing’s greatest stage following on from City Island’s victory in the 2019 renewal of the race and that of Ferny Hollow in last year’s Weatherbys Champion Bumper. “It was some thrill,” said a delighted Parkhill of his family’s latest Cheltenham hero. “There was so much talk about him and hype over him in the run-up to Cheltenham, I wondered if it could actually happen. “The pressure was worse this year because with City Island it was unexpected and Ferny Hollow, winning was a possibility but it wasn’t really expected in the same way that people were anticipating Bob Olinger winning; there was a lot or pressure.”
Even more remarkably, Bob Olinger and Ferny Hollow were part of the same crop bred at Parkhill’s Castletown Quarry Stud near Trim in County Meath.
The pair made their hurdling debuts in the same race at Gowran Park back in November when Ferny Hollow, trained by Willie Mullins, inflicted the only defeat of an otherwise blemish free career on Bob Olinger, who finished a length behind in second.
This latest Parkhill Cheltenham triumph is just one on a long roll of honour that stretches back 30 years to the full-brothers Morley Street and Granville Again, who were both winners of the Champion Hurdle.
Ferny Hollow and City Island come from different branches of their family, while Parkhill and his family have enjoyed a long and successful relationship with Bob Olinger’s family that reaches back even further than that.
There is no secret to their success in having bred so many top-class horses and founded equine dynasties, and Parkhill believes that fortune shining favourably is a key element and one beyond anyone’s control.
Bob Olinger, this year’s Grade 1 Ballymore hero, was initially retained by Parkhill and sent to Pat Doyle of Suirview Stables to point-to-point
“Luck is the main thing really. I inherited a few good pedigrees from my parents and we try to mind the fillies and nurse them along,” he qualifies. “There’s a lot of luck involved in getting them into the right people. I can’t emphasise how important luck is really, the day my father bought High Board he turned away when she was at £2,900, but someone said to give it another one so he did and he got her.
“If they hadn’t said that, how differently would things have turned out? So luck really does play a huge role.”
Castletown Quarry Stud is a family affair; Ken’s wife Louise and their two sons Nicky and Peter are all heavily involved in the work of breeding, racing and selling their horses and Bob Olinger’s family holds a special place in the affections of all of them.
“I won a bumper on his great-great grandmother, that’s how far it goes back!
“She was a little light filly at the sales, we were only small fish at the time and we bought her for very little. We kept her and I trained her, it was the year I finished college, and I won a bumper on her at the Punchestown Festival. It was my first ride and her first run.
Bob Olinger, like another nine 2021 Cheltenham Festival winners, is a graduate of the Irish point-to-point scene. The Parkhill family chose not to send the Sholokhov gelding to the store sales – like his older Kalanisi half-brother Six Gun Serenade he was a big and backward type, not really a sale horse.
Six Gun Serenade went to leading pointto-point trainer Pat Doyle for whom he won a four-year-old maiden at Ballyarthur and was sold. Bob Olinger was successful on debut at Turtulla for Doyle before he was acquired privately by current connections.
THE PARKHILLS aim to keep the fillies from their good pedigrees as much as they possibly can, something that hasn’t always been simple.
“It hasn’t been easy at times, because we could have sold three-year-old fillies with that type of pedigree for a good few quid, but we would be looking at the pedigree dying out and we have had these families for generations so we couldn’t sell them and risk that happening,” Parkhill reveals.
Those fillies are living, breathing heirlooms as precious as any Fabergé egg or Ming vase and they are cared for by the family as part of a 25-strong broodmare band.
“We have his dam still, she is in-foal to Poet’s Word, and we have three half-sisters. There is one down with Willie Mullins, she is leased to the Blue Bloods Racing Syndicate and called Never So Blue, and we have his three-year-old Flemensfirth half-sister here and she will be covered this year.
“His Presenting half-sister Myska was a very good filly, who won a Listed hurdle for Willie Mullins and we have her daughter as well,” adds Parkhill.
Both City Island and Ferny Hollow’s dams have three-year-old geldings, who will be gracing a store sale in the summer. Victorine, dam of City Island, has a Mount Nelson gelding, while Ferny Hollow’s Westerner full-brother will no doubt be enormously popular. His Kalanisi four-year-old halfbrother achieved the third highest price of €135,000 at last year’s Goffs Land Rover Sale. Their dam Mirazur also has a twoyear-old Court Cave filly, who will remain at Castletown Quarry Stud.
Mirazur and Victorine are from the great High Board family of Morley Street and Granville Again. Victorine is an Un Desperado half-sister to the pair and one of three daughters of High Board to produce a Grade 1 winner, while Mirazur is out of Victorine’s Strong Gale half-sister Higher Again.
While Cheltenham 2021 was undoubtedly a memorable one for the Parkhill family, he says they were just delighted to be part of an astoundingly successful one for the sport.
“It was a great week for everything, it was great for racing because there were no controversies, it was a great week for Irish breeding, and it was a week full of great stories like Rachael Blackmore’s and Paul Hennessy’s, that was a real fairytale. It was fantastic.”
