Cornish Queen: dam to eventing superstars

What goes into producing not one but two elite event horses? Matha Terry meets the broodmare behind half-siblings Lordships Graffalo and Pencos Crown Jewel

BREEDING a superstar looks easy when you analyse the pedigree. Cornish Queen, the dam of the all-conquering Lordships Graffalo (Walter) and five-star campaigner Pencos Crown Jewel (Jasmine), has bloodlines loaded with quality. Advanced event horses and classy steeplechasing genes pepper both sides of the family tree.

Put to top eventing sires Grafenstolz and Jumbo, how could she possibly fail to produce champion offspring? But as any breeder knows, the theory often bears scant relation to practice.

In fact, the story of Cornish Queen – known as Geri – goes back decades. Piece by piece, parts of an intricate puzzle were being interlocked over the years to produce the full and glorious picture resulting in a Badminton and European champion. But if it wasn’t for the intuition, talent and knowledge of Geri’s breeder Bridget Parker, these sterling lines might never have come to fruition.

Mimi Falb, who owns yearling Pencos Sovereign – the full sister to Lordships Graffalo (see box, p40) – highlights Bridget’s wizardry.

“It’s amazing how Bridget put all these lines together,” she says. “She had a foresight no one else had.”

Back in 1972, Bridget rode a gelding by the name of Cornish Gold to Olympic eventing team gold in Munich. Soon after, she bought his half-sister, Tregea, named after “the house of the old Cornishman I bought her from”.

“I never rode Tregea, but she had 12 foals, and five of them went advanced,” Bridget says. “My daughter Katie [Burton] rode most of them, including Cornish Faer, the mother of Cornish Queen, at Badminton and Burghley.