Porta Fortuna provides timely Group 1 update for Ten Sovereigns half-sister with Cheveley Park strike

Porta Fortuna could not have provided her Ten Sovereigns half-sister with a better good luck charm for Book 1 next week after a comprehensive success in the Cheveley Park Stakes. 

The Donnacha O'Brien filly's latest big-race score ensures her half-sister, consigned by The Castlebridge Consignment as lot 155, will have even more admirers at Park Paddocks on Tuesday. 

Having already struck in the Albany Stakes at Royal Ascot and then finished second and third in the Phoenix and Moyglare Stud Stakes, she was the second winner of the Newmarket Group 1 for her sire Caravaggio.

A top-class sprinter himself with victories in the Commonwealth Cup, Phoenix Stakes and Coventry Stakes, Caravaggio's first flagbearer, Tenebrism, struck for Donnacha's father Aidan O'Brien in the Rowley Mile race in 2021.

Porta Fortuna and winning connections after the Cheveley Park Stakes Credit: Mark Cranham

He started his stallion career off at Coolmore's Irish base before transferring across the Atlantic to Ashford Stud. He was then sold to Japan to stand at the Shizunai Stallion Station. 

Caravaggio has now sired three Group or Grade 1 winners, the other being this year's Diana Stakes winner Whitebeam, a Juddmonte homebred out of an Oasis Dream half-sister to St Leger hero Logician. 

Porta Fortuna was bred by O'Brien's Whisperview Trading and the filly's dam, Too Precious, produced a filly foal by Arc and Prix du Jockey Club hero Sottsass this year.

The other two juvenile Group races at Newmarket were won by Tattersalls graduates in Vandeek and Ghostwriter. The unbeaten Middle Park hero, Vandeek, was bred by Kelly Thomas of Maywood Stud and had twice gone through the Park Paddocks ring before his 625,000gns Craven Breeze-Up Sale acquisition by Stroud Coleman. 

Royal Lodge winner Ghostwriter, by Invincible Spirit and out of a stakes-placed Champs Elysees descendant of Zafonic, was a 100,000gns purchase by Jeff Smith's Littleton Stud as a foal. 

Read more

20th top-flight winner for Sea The Stars as Tattersalls Autumn HIT graduate Just Fine takes out The Metropolitan