RESTIVE has shown improved form with each run and landed the opening maiden at the Curragh on Sunday with some ease in the colours of Qatar Racing Limited. Ger Lyons has charge of this two-year-old son of Rip Van Winkle who was purchased as a yearling by David Redvers for £110,000 at the DBS Premier Yearling Sale. He was bred by Denis Brosnan’s Epona Bloodstock.

The colt’s yearling half-sister goes to the same venue the week after next and she is a daughter of Intense Focus.

Their dam I Hearyou Knocking has now had three runners and three winners and the yearling filly for sale comes from a female line noted for producing top-class racemares. Her third dam Hail Maggie was an own-sister to Trillion and Margravine, and she also bred the Grade 1 winner and sire Sabona.

Restive’s second dam Flood, by Riverman, is the grandam also of four stakes winners, the best of which were the siblings Landseer and Ikhtyar. The former won the French 1000 Guineas and was also a Grade 1 winner in the USA.

He was supplemented to the 2002 Breeders’ Cup Mile but fell in the race and sadly had to be euthanised.

Rip Van Winkle stands under the Coolmore Stud banner and his 2015 fee was €25,000. This was on the back of an excellent first season with his runners last year that included the Group 1 winner Dick Whittington, and the Group 3 winner I Am Beautiful who had another daughter of the sire, Jeanne Girl, back in third.

He is yet another son of the outstanding sire Galileo.