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Champion trainer Gai Waterhouse really has a thing going with the female progeny of the late Northern Meteor, the powerful sprinter she trained to Group One success before his all too brief stud career.

The premature loss of Northern Meteor was highlighted again at Randwick on Saturday when the Waterhouse-trained Speak Fondly made a brilliant start to her 3YO season with an all the way win in the G2 Silver Shadow Stakes, beating her talented stablemate Kimberley Star.

A brilliant winner of the G2 Magic Night Stakes last season, Speak Fondly is one of 18 stakes winners for Northern Meteor and adds to the outstanding success Waterhouse has enjoyed with his progeny, especially his daughters.

Among the Northern Meteor stars trained by Waterhouse are G1 winners Cosmic Endeavour, Amanpour and Romantic Touch and notable Group winners Najoom, Fighting Sun and Speak Fondly.

She also has trained an additional 10 individual winners by Northern Meteor of over 40 races, more than three times the next most successful trainer of the breed.

Northern Meteor’s oldest progeny are now five-year-olds and his last crop of yearlings was sold last season. His sons are now going to stud led by Zoustar, Shooting To Win, Fighting Sun and Deep Field.

A half sister to Waterhouse’s G2 winner Wild And Proud, Speak Fondly has won two of five starts earning over $250,000 prizemoney.

The Gooree Stud-bred and owned filly is the fifth winner from the stakes winning Flying Spur mare Blab, a half-sister to G3 winner Yammer from the family of Golden Slipper winner Bounding Away.

Blab died in 2013.

Speak Fondly’s third dam is the stakes winner Who Can Say (Sovereign Edition), who not only produced six time G1 winner Bounding Away (Biscay) but the fellow G1 winner Glastonbury (Sir Tristram).

Northern Meteor (Encosta De Lago) has now sired two Group winners out of a Flying Spur (Danehill) mare, the other being the Listed-winning Atmospherical.