by Pete Denk

Multiple Grade 2 winner Oonagh Maccool (Ire) has been retired following a fifth-place finish in the Sabin Handicap (G3) at Gulfstream Park on February 17.

Trainer Todd Pletcher said the five-year-old Giant’s Causeway mare came out of the race with a saucer fracture to her left front cannon bone.

Oonagh Maccool won five of nine starts for owner/breeder Charles Wacker III, including the Rampart Handicap (G2) at Gulfstream Park and the Louisville Breeders’ Cup Handicap (G2) at Churchill Downs, and earned $379,528.

“The injury was something she could come back from, but seeing as she is such a valuable commodity as a broodmare, the timing just wasn’t good to push on,” Pletcher said. “I think she was an extremely talented filly that we were a little unlucky not to win a Grade 1 with. I felt like she was a top quality mare and would have been a deserving Grade 1 winner, because she certainly had that kind of quality.”

Oonagh Maccool won her first two career starts in England before she was transferred to Pletcher’s North American barn in late 2005. She is out of the Chief Singer mare Alidiva (Ire) and is a half sister to European highweights and Group 1 winners Taipan, Ali-Royal, and Sleepytime (Ire).

Oonagh Maccool will go to Taylor Made Farm in Nicholasville, Kentucky, where she is expected to be bred to Unbridled’s Song.

Pete Denk is a Thoroughbred Times staff writer