KIERAN Cotter may have got himself a bargain when he gave €10,000 for a three-year-old daughter of Flemensfirth at the Goffs Land Rover Sale in June. She was then a full-sister to two runners that had been placed in black.type races, but now the younger of that pair, Emile Gray, won a listed race at Carlisle at the weekend, beating the Willie Mullins hotpot Gitane Du Berlais.

Pride Of the Parish and Emily Gray are two racecourse winners for their unraced Jupiter Island dam Rose Island. She also bred the multiple winning point-to-pointer Roseyroo and the Mahler five-year-old Sussex Road who was runner-up recently and will likely go on and win.

Rose Island’s grandam was the wonderful racemare Rose Ravine and this daughter of champion sire Deep Run won the Waterford Crystal Stayers’ Hurdle at Cheltenham. That was in 1985 and she was trained by Fulke Walwyn for Sally Smart. The mare certainly interfered with Crimson Embers but he was owned and trained by the same people and hence they didn’t object.

Having been a really top class racemare – she also won the Fernbank Hurdle and was runner-up in the Aintree Hurdle – she went on to become an excellent broodmare. She had 10 foals at stud, eight of which ran and all of them won. Two of them showed a great liking for Aintree and both Cardinal Red and Ringaroses won black type races there. Another son Frost Canyon won eight times but was runner-up in Grade 2 races over hurdles, fences and even a bumper.

Emily Gray was bred by Robert McCarthy at The Beeches Stud and she has more than justified the small outlay of £3000 that she cost as a four-year-old at DBS. She has already won £65,000.