THE Murphy family in Ballycurragh Stud had plenty to be happy about last Sunday. The three-year-old Nayef (Gulch) colt Ice Breeze continued his upward progression when he added the Group 1 Prix Royal Oak (French St Leger) to his victory on Arc weekend in the Group 2 Prix Chaudenay.

Unraced at two, the Khalid Abdullah-owned colt is the winner of half of his eight starts this year, including the Group 2 Prix Hocquart, and his winnings now amount to some €466,150.

Why were they celebrating in Carlow? Ice Breeze’s full-brother Snow Sky retired to stud there in 2016 and his first foals are on the ground. Indeed, five of them are catalogued at next month’s Tattersalls Ireland November National Hunt Sale – four colts and a single filly.

Snow Sky was no slouch himself and he numbered three group races among his five career victories and ran third in the Group 1 St Leger to Kingston Hill.

Snow Sky beat Brown Panther in the Group 2 Yorkshire Cup and accounted for Eagle Top when given a stunning ride by Pat Smullen to land the Group 2 Hardwicke Stakes at Royal Ascot. He also won a listed race at Lingfield and had the subsequent Group 1 winner Hartnell a couple of lengths in arrears that day. Snow Sky was trained by Sir Michael Stoute for his owner/breeder Khalid Abdullah.

Snow Sky and last weekend’s Group 1 victor are the best of the four winners to date from the Dansili (Danehill) mare Winter Silence. She won twice and was listed-placed in France and she is closely related to the Group 2 Prix Greffulhe winner Ice Blue (Dansili), who is out of Winter Silence’s group-placed half-sister Winter Solstice (Unfuwain), and to the Group 1 Nassau Stakes winner Winsili (Dansili), a granddaughter of Winter Solstice.

Winter Silence and Winter Solstice were talented runners, both earning blacktype, and they had no fewer than four stakes winning siblings.

Heading the quartet are the Group/Grade 1 winners Polish Summer (Polish Precedent) and Meteor Storm (Bigstone). The former landed the Group 1 Dubai Sheema Classic, while in France his biggest success came in the Group 2 Grand Prix de Deauville. He was twice runner-up in the Group 1 Grand Prix de Saint-Cloud and also finished second in the Group 1 Hong Kong Vase.

Meteor Storm won one more race than Polish Summer, his seven victories headed by the Grade 1 Manhattan Handicap. His career earnings were approaching $1.5 million and he was twice runner-up in Grade 1s in Canada and the USA.

Ice Breeze’s win in the Group 1 Prix Royal Oak was not the first time this has happened in the family. The grandam of Ice Breeze and Snow Sky is Hunt The Sun (Rainbow Quest) and she is a full-sister to two colts who also won the same race. Raintrap added the Grade 1 Rothmans International and the San Juan Capistrano Handicap, while Sunshack also won the Group 1 Coronation Cup at Epsom and the Criterium de Saint-Cloud.

Hunt The Sun is an own-sister to the group-placed Summer Breeze and she is the dam of Group 2 Prince of Wales’s Stakes winner Doctor Fremantle (Sadler’s Wells) who was placed in the Group 1 Zabeel Classic, and grandam of the Group 3 winner Starboard (Zamindar).

Finally, a mention of Nayef, the impeccably bred son of Gulch (Mr Prospector) and Height Of Fashion (Bustino). The 19-year-old stood this year at Nunnery Stud for a bargain £5,000 and his previous Group 1 winners were the Prix Jean Prat and Prix Jacques Le Marois hero Tamayuz (sire of three Group 1 winners, including Precieuse and Blond Me in 2017) and the Prix de l’Opera heroine Lady Marian. Other notable sons include Mustajeeb, Valirann and Forgotten Rules.