Con Te Partiro becomes 31st top-level winner for Scat Daddy in Coolmore Classic

A bold decision to bring Con Te Partiro, winner of the Sandringham Handicap at Royal Ascot three years ago, out of retirement after she failed to get in foal during last year's southern hemisphere breeding season in Australia paid off handsomely as she landed the Group 1 Coolmore Classic at Rosehill on Saturday.

The six-year-old mare is trained by Gai Waterhouse and Adrian Bott for Newgate Farm and SF Bloodstock, who paid $575,000 for her at the Fasig-Tipton November Breeding-Stock Sale in 2018.

She had earlier been trained by Wesley Ward, for whom she won the Sandringham Handicap with Jamie Spencer aboard and ran third in the Grade 3 Arlington Matron Stakes and a close fourth in the Grade 1 Del Mar Oaks.

After being purchased by her present Australian connections she took the Group 3 Arrowfield Dark Jewel Classic at Scone last year before her retirement to paddocks and a cover by Zoustar, only for to fail to get in foal and return to the track.

“She was retired, she'd gone to stud,’’ Bott told the Australian Daily Telegraph. “Gai and I were disappointed because we were hoping for another season with this mare as we felt she had so much more to give as a racehorse.

“I could understand why they sent her to stud as they had to make a commercial decision. But when she didn’t get in foal, we asked the owners to consider putting her back into work.

“We got another opportunity with the mare and this is the result. It’s a great story.’’

Plans now call for Con Te Partiro to contest either the Doncaster Mile at Randwick next month or the Coolmore Legacy Stakes against her own sex at the same track seven days later.

Con Te Partiro becomes the 31st top-level winner for the late influential Ashford Stud resident Scat Daddy, whose progeny roll of honour features Caravaggio, Lady Aurelia and Sioux Nation – who also scored at Royal Ascot in 2017 to give the stallion a famous four-timer – as well as Triple Crown hero Justify and exciting young sire No Nay Never.

Scat Daddy succumbed to a heart attack aged only 11 in December 2015, but Con Te Partiro is his second new Grade 1 winner in the space of a week after the five-year-old entire Combatant scored in the Santa Anita Handicap last Saturday.

Con Te Partiro was bred by Daniel Kessler and Cathy Cordes under the KC Garrett Farm banner. The mare, originally a $130,000 Keeneland September yearling purchase by Cromwell Bloodstock, is out of Grade 1 Humana Distaff Stakes runner-up Temple Street, a daughter of Street Cry, and is thus bred on the same cross as Moyglare Stud Stakes winner Skitter Scatter.

Con Te Partiro is a half-sister to Grade 2-placed Donworth and the siblings' fourth dam is California Oaks winner and blue hen Northern Meteor (not to be confused with the sire of Zoustar), a daughter of Northern Dancer who produced Grade 1 winners A Phenomenon and Seattle Meteor as well as Meteor Stage, the dam of US champion two-year-old filly Pleasant Stage.

Con Te Partiro's victory in the Coolmore Classic came at the expense of runner-up Miss Fabulass, a southern hemisphere-bred daughter of Frankel and brilliant racemare Samantha Miss representing Strawberry Hill Stud.

Read a Racing Post interview with Con Te Partiro's breeders Daniel Kessler and Cathy Cordes from 2017