FRANKEL fever is showing absolutely no signs of abating, and rightly so. He has made a quite sensational start to his new career as a sire and I had the pleasure of seeing him in the flesh on a recent visit to Banstead Manor Stud in Newmarket.

Now he has achieved the ultimate one could wish for with a first-season sire, getting the first of what is sure to be many Group 1 winners. The success was gained on Sunday in the Hanshin Juvenile Fillies in Japan and the winner was the two-year-old filly Soul Stirring. This was a big step up in class for the previous two-time winner and she will now be one of the favourites for next year’s classics.

Unbeaten now in three starts she is the second foal and winner for her outstanding dam Stacelita. That daughter of Monsun finished in the first three on 14 of her 18 career starts, winning 10 times. She was unbeaten until she contested the 2009 Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe, finishing unplaced behind Sea The Stars.

By then she had won the French Oaks (Prix de Diane), Prix Saint-Alary and Prix Vermeille and the following season she added the Group 1 Prix Jean Romanet to her tally. She then left France to continue her racing career in the USA and there she won twice more at the highest level, in the Beverly D Stakes and the Flower Bowl International. She was crowned champion grass mare in America.

Her first mating was with Smart Strike and that produced the now three-year-old filly Southern Stars. Teruya Yoshida put her in training with John Gosden and she won a maiden in four starts this year. However her Group 1 winning sister has ensured that her value will have increased following last weekend’s racing.

Stacelita is the best of five winners from her Dashing Blade dam Soignee. That German-bred filly was a stakes-winning juvenile in her country of birth and was group-placed in France. Her five winners have come from her first six foals and she also has a two-year-old daughter by Frankel. She sold for €450,000 at Arqana last year but is not yet named.

Soignee is one of four stakes winners out of the listed-placed Suivez, a daughter of Fioravanti. Two of those winners were by Stacelita’s sire Monsun, the Group 2 winner Simoun and the listed winning mare Soudaine, now herself the dam of two stakes winners headed by the French Group 2 scorer and German Derby runner-up Savoir Vivre (by Adlerflug). The crossing of Monsun with Suivez also produced the unraced Suisun, dam of a couple of stakes winners including the dual group winner Silvaner (by Lomitas).

Frankel, a son of Galileo, now is the sire of Group 1 winner Soul Stirring, Group 2 winner Queen Kindly and the Group 3 winners Mi Suerte, Fair Eva, Frankus and Toulifaut, as well as the stakes-placed Cunco.