DAVID Harvey owned and trained Titian Blonde during her career, having purchased her from the Keating sisters, Dolores and Phena. The daughter of former Garryrichard Stud stallion Callernish won six races for Harvey, two bumpers, three hurdle races and a chase. She garnered some valuable blacktype at Fairyhouse on the way.

After producing three foals at stud, Harvey sold the mare to Malachy Stone back in 2000 for 36,000gns, retaining a then yearling daughter by Old Vic. That filly was named Blonde Ambition and she won a couple of point-to-points for Harvey and was placed over hurdles and fences on the racecourse proper. Her first two foals have run and won and the second of them is Brain Power, winner of the Grade 3 Wessex Youth Trust Hurdle at Ascot on Saturday.

A five-year-old son of Kalanisi, he was impressive when scoring by five lengths for owner Michael Buckley and trainer Nicky Henderson and the gelding is another graduate of the Warren Ewing/Barry Geraghty academy, having cost Ewing €30,000 as a three-year-old at the Derby Sale.

Third in the Grade 1 novice hurdle at Punchestown earlier in the year, he also landed a listed race at Sandown before his most recent, and most important, success to date.

He is yet another fine example of the prowess of his sire Kalanisi who is a member of a four-horse stallion barn at Boardsmill Stud, along with Califet, who recently featured in this column, Court Cave, and the newly acquired Mount Nelson. What a team William and John Flood have to go to battle with in 2017.

Prior to producing Brain Power, Blonde Ambition bred the Gamut gelding Degooch and this eight-time winner (one of them in a point-to-point) just missed out on blacktype on his last run when fourth in a listed chase. The pair of winners are followed by a four-year-old daughter of Gamut, a two-year-old full-brother to Brain Power (a €22,000 purchase by Stroud Coleman Bloodstock last year) and a yearling colt by Califet.

Another daughter of Titian Blonde is the unraced Oilpainting, by Welsh Term. Her second foal at stud was the Old Vic gelding Vics Canvas who ran the race of his life earlier this year to finish third behind Rule The World in the Grand National at Aintree. A Grade 3 winner over hurdles and fences, he was bred by Paul McNamee, a friend of the Harvey family.

That family connection was enhanced a decade or more ago when David Harvey trained the Magical Wonder gelding Schwartzhalle to land the Grade 2 Flyingbolt Novice Chase at Navan and the winner was owned and bred by McNamee.

He was a son of the once-raced Liams Flash, a full-sister to Titian Blonde.

One more winner of note to mention in the immediate family is the Dermot Weld-trained, Michael Smurfit-owned Perris Valley. A son of Le Bavard and bred by the renowned Wexford breeder Mattie Parle, Perris Valley had his best day at the races when winning the Jameson Irish Grand National.