FRANK and Paula Cullen lost their foundation broodmare Calendar Girl, the dam of Badminton winner Paulank Brockagh, this week. The Triggerero 29-year-old was spotted at Fairyhouse sport horse sales in 1992.

In a feature in this newspaper back in 2014 about Paulank Brockagh’s rise to fame, Paula explained how the Fairyhouse impulse buy happened, saying: “This lovely yearling, who had won in the showring in the west, left the ring unsold. I phoned Frank and his first question was ‘What do you want a yearling filly for?’ My answer was ‘I just like her and we can breed from her for a year and then break her’. I got the okay and ran out to find her being loaded into a trailer. I did a deal with the owners and she was reversed out.”

Bred in Co. Sligo by P.J Lang, Calendar Girl was by the thoroughbred sire Triggerero out of the Frenchwood mare, Glendora. Calendar Girl bred a total of 15 foals, including her first offspring Paulank Kimble (Cruising) exported to Italy and later bought back by the couple as a broodmare; Paulank Camaderry (French Buffet) and Paulank Brave (Ghareeb), both sold to the US; four-star eventer Paulank King’s River (Kings Master) and her final foal; Paulank Spink (Cruising Arish).

The star of the bunch was Paulank Brockagh. Foaled in 2003, she was by Touchdown and with Australia’s Sam Griffiths won the now five-star Badminton in 2014, the same year as the pair finished in individual 17th place at the WEG.

Two years later, Paulank Brockagh finished fourth at the summer Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, where she and Griffiths were also on the Australian bronze medal winning team. Her Badminton success earned Paula a Horse Sport Ireland breeders award in 2014.

Paulank Brockagh and Sam Griffiths at the 2016 Rio Olympic Games \ Shannon Brinkman

Still retained on the Cullen’s Wicklow farm are three of Calendar Girl’s daughters: Paulank Kimble, Paulank Brave’s full-sister Calla Lilly, who has produced three Jumbo offspring and the rising four-year-old Paulank Spink, by the Cruising clone, Cruising Arish.

“She [Calendar Girl] has been beside our house for 28 years and would literally talk to you as you went down the drive. As the late Iris Kellett would say, ‘She has gone where all horse angels go’,” Kellet’s former pupil Cullen told The Irish Field this week.