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Miss Frankel will be the focus of all attention when she makes her debut in Saturday's Welcome To Kenilworth Maiden Juvenile Plate.
Sean Veale’s mount is not just the first horse sired by the undefeated wonder horse to grace the South African turf but she is a daughter of champion sprinter Val De Ra who won both the Computaform Sprint and SA Fillies Sprint in 2011 as well as the following year’s Cape Flying Championship.
Miss Frankel also represents a huge investment by Michael Taberer in his bid to keep the Avontuur Stud on the same exalted plane to which his late father took it. Not only did he buy out his brother, young Taberer promptly elected to send the stud’s best mare halfway round the world to mate her with some of the best stallions money can buy. The mating with Oasis Dream has yet to produce a worthwhile dividend but by all accounts the Frankel filly is something special.
Rival trainers in Saturday's race talk about the filly being an aimer, meaning that all Veale has to do is point her in the right direction and it will be race over.
Dennis Drier, who also trained Val De Ra, is a conservative man not given to rave about his horses before they reach Grade 1 standard but his delight in this one has been scarcely concealed and he says: “She may just need it but I think she has done enough to get away with it – she has galloped on the course – and she is a lovely filly.”
In Britain last year one Frankel after the next won first time out as regularly as night follows day. But in Cape Town it’s a lot more difficult to get horses ready to win on debut because the training facilities (no hills or slopes for a start) are not so conducive. Indeed many trainers prefer to let the first run bring them on.
“Casual Diamond has only been on the grass once – we don’t have gallops so it’s hard to tell,” says Justin Snaith echoing this. “But mine is fast.”
His Var filly is not the only one well bred enough to shake up the favourite. Lily Theresa, who cost R1.2 million, is also by Var and is out of a half-sister to the Golden Horse Casino winner Contador. Magical Wonderland is a R450 000 What A Winter half-sister to Computaform Sprint runner-up Magico and comes from a stable whose two-year-olds have been running well.
The best form of the four that have run was shown by Regal Ruby. “My other runner came across her at the start and knocked her back last,” says Greg Ennion. “To then finish fourth to some decent colts was pretty good and she has come on a lot.”
