SAM Curling sold Summerville Boy for £130,000 last May at the Goffs UK Spring Sale. He and owner Richard Downes enjoyed a great turn with their Killarney bumper winner. Bought for €4,000 as a three-year-old at the Tattersalls Ireland August Sale, he left them quite a profit when he was sold to Roger Brookhouse.

Trained now by Tom George, the six-year-old son of Sandmason (Grand Lodge) won his first hurdle race at the weekend, but it was no ordinary hurdle race. The Grade 1 32Red Tolworth Hurdle had been won in the three previous years by L’Ami Serge, Yorkhill and Finian’s Oscar, and this is a measure of the regard in which the race is held. Previously Summerville Boy was runner-up in a Grade 2 novice hurdle at Cheltenham in November.

Paul Rothwell manages the family’s Lacken Stud and he bred Summerville Boy, who is a son of the resident stallion there Sandmason. Indeed it was a good week for Paul and the stallion. On Tuesday the £210,000 Goffs UK Aintree Sale purchase Black Op won at Doncaster and he too represents owner Roger Brookhouse and trainer Tom George.

Sandmason was bred and raced by Lord Howard de Walden and was trained by Sir Henry Cecil. He became one of the trainer’s magnificent haul of 75 Royal Ascot winners when he won the Group 2 Hardwicke Stakes in a driving finish with Zindabad. Sandmason was one of three Cecil runners in the race and the outsider of the trio. He also showed some excellent form in defeat, beaten by just Millenary in the Group 2 Jockey Club Stakes and Beat Hollow in the Listed Green Ridge Stakes.

Summerville Boy is from a female line whose best runners improved with age. It is not unreasonable to expect the same of the Tolworth winner. He is the best runner to date from his unraced dam Suny House (Carroll House) and she also has a half-sister who bred a Grade 1 winner. Mini Moo Min (Ardross) won a couple of hurdle races when trained by Alan King, and also won one for Richard Philips.

It was for Alan King that Mini Moo Min’s best runner was successful. Annacotty (Beneficial) won the Grade 1 Feltham Novice Chase at Kempton, but he was also something of a Cheltenham specialist and won a trio of Grade 3 chases there, most notably the Paddy Power Gold Cup.

Mini Moo Min and Suny House are daughters of Mulloch Brae (Sunyboy). She was trained by David Nicholson and in four of her five victories was ridden by the champion Richard Dunwoody. On her final start she came close to winning the only blacktype race she ever contested, finishing second in the Grade 2 Kingmaker Novices’ Chase at Warwick.

That was in 1991, the year after Mulloch Brae’s own-brother Bigsun gained the most important of his seven career victories, taking the Listed National Hunt Chase by a head at Cheltenham from the subsequent Aintree Grand National winner Seagram. Bigsun was also trained by ‘The Duke’ Nicholson and had Dunwoody in the saddle.

Mulloch Brae and Bigsun were not the best of the eight winning offspring from Stella Roma (Le Levanstell). That honour falls to Androma (Andrea Mantegna) and he was trained by Jimmy Fitzgerald to win back-to-back Scottish Grand Nationals in 1984 and 1985. He was partnered on both occasions by Mark Dwyer and it took more than 30 years to see that feat repeated by Vicente who was successful in 2016 and 2017.

Suny House has a two-year-old El Salvador (Galileo) colt and a yearling colt from the first crop of Ballycurragh Stud’s Snow Sky (Nayef). The latter sire, like Sandmason, won the Group 2 Hardwicke Stakes at Royal Ascot.