AFTER a gap I have recently met Jeremy Hill on a couple of occasions and his name cropped up again when I was researching the pedigree of the recent impressive Killarney winner Johannes Vermeer. The two-year-old son of Galileo won in the style of a horse going places, and he has a name to match that hope.

Johannes Vermeer, a €300,000 Goffs Orby yearling, is the first foal of the Holy Roman Emperor mare Inca Princess. She also has a yearling full-sister to Sue Magnier’s winner.

Inca Princess was sold as a yearling to Demi O’Byrne for €140,000 and went into training at Ballydoyle. She won on her second start, a maiden at Fairyhouse, but was not seen out again after finishing down the field in the Group 2 Debutante Stakes, the 2015 renewal of which was run last weekend.

Inca Princess is one of three winning offspring out of the Marju mare Miletrian who was bred by Jeremy Hill at his Monksgrange Stud near Enniscorthy in Co Wexford.

She was trained by Mick Channon after her purchase as a yearling for IR£70,000, and was then sold as a four-year-old for 700,000gns to Eaton Sales as a potential broodmare. By then she had won the Ribblesdale Stakes, a Group 2 at the time, and the Group 3 Park Hill Stakes.

Her half-brother Mr Combustible, a son of Hernando, won the Group 2 Geoffrey Freer Stakes and was third to Milan in the 1991 St Leger.

At stud he is best known for his National Hunt winners, and they include David Pipe’s highly-talented but lightly-raced 2014 Midlands Grand National winner Goulanes, and the 2013 Fulke Walwyn Kim Muir Chase winner Same Difference, trained by Nigel Twiston-Davies.

Miletrian and Mr Combustible were two of the four foals out of the unraced Dancing Brave mare Warg, and all of them won. One of the others was a full-brother to Miletrian and he was Marksman I, who won on his only start for Luca Cumani and in the hands of Pat Eddery. Sadly he did not get to build on that success.

Warg’s dam is a full-sister to Shirley Heights, the dual Derby winner and leading sire.

Miletrian has not produced anything approaching her own ability yet, though she still has a chance to do so and foaled a colt by Excelebration this year, only her eighth progeny. Given that the family in recent times has produced a classic horse in every second generation, Johannes Vermeer may well be the next one to achieve that feat.