Via Sistina’s outstanding victory in the Group 1 Winx Stakes added another chapter to the Yulong story, the fifth time its green and white colours have been carried to victory in an elite Australian race. This week’s Run The Numbers looks at its burgeoning influence as a successful owner.
When Yuesheng Zhang first made his mark on the Australian racing scene in the mid-2010s, a sudden burst of horses with the Yulong moniker hit the racetrack.
If the Chinese billionaire was hoping to make his first inroads into Australian racing inconspicuous, naming almost every single horse under his ownership after Yulong would have appeared to be an early, and rare, misstep.
There are few more cynical groups of people than the Australian punting and racing public and the sudden influx of Yulong horses in Australian racing drew derision, as Zhang’s investment in Australia was seen as a flight of fancy.
But while the punting public lives race to race, Zhang was building an empire to last decades. From the start, he said he had grand ambitions for Yulong, extending far beyond the track to building a breeding empire.
Less than a decade later, he is the biggest player in the Australian bloodstock scene, he has the largest broodmare band in the country, while on the track, the farm’s green and white colours have just marked a fifth Group 1 victory.
It hasn’t been a straightforward path to success, particularly on the racing side in Australia.
In 2015, Zhang wasn’t exactly mixing it with the big boys. He won a Pakenham Cup with a tried horse called Our Voodoo Prince, while further country cups success would flow from horses like Killarney Kid.
Early metropolitan successes came from horses such as Yu Long Sheng Hui and Yulong Baby, who gave Zhang his first Australian Group 1 starter when contesting the 2015 Queensland Oaks, famously the second of Winx’s 33 straight wins.
Holy Snow, a horse purchased by Yulong as a yearling in 2016, won the 2018 G2 Autumn Stakes for Mick Price, bolstering the owner’s profile further.
Later that year, Zhang’s outfit hit national headlines when Yulong was the successful slotholder as Redzel won the second edition of The Everest. It wasn’t quite owning a Group 1 winner, but it wasn’t far off.
Helen Thomas
Zhang’s ambitions, both in terms of racing and breeding stock, extended much further than Australian shores. Horses such as Wild Dude and Yu Long Bao Bei made their mark around the same time in the Middle East, Ireland and Europe.
In 2018, Yulong purchased 20 regally bred, mostly tried racehorses from the stables of Aidan O’Brien to bring to Australia. That exercise did not yield the success that would have been hoped on the track, but it was a major sign of intent. Zhang did not do things by halves.
In 2020, Zhang got his first major reward in the racetrack when Lucky Vega, a yearling purchase out of Goffs, won the National Stakes at The Curragh in Ireland for Jessica Harrington.
Less than three months later, Yulong had its first Australian Group 1 winner when Yulong Prince, who Zhang had purchased after he had won a Grade 1 race in South Africa 18 months earlier, landed the Cantala Stakes at Flemington for Chris Waller.
Both Lucky Vega and Yulong Prince would join the Yulong Australian stallion roster in 2021.
Bren O’Brien
By that point, Grunt, Tagaloa and Alabama Express, all of whom had been purchased by Yulong after their Group 1 success, were already residents, while Yulong had also purchased champion stallion Written Tycoon.
In the autumn of 2021, Yulong hailed its first Group 1-winning Australian filly. Another tribute to Zhang’s global thinking, Hungry Heart was a Frankel filly conceived in the UK but foaled down in Australia out of a mare that Yulong had purchased at Tattersalls at Newmarket in 2016.
Twice Hungry Heart could have ended up in the hands of other owners. Her dam Harlech was offered and passed in carrying the filly in 2017, and Hungry Heart herself was offered and effectively bought back by Yulong at Magic Millions in 2019.
Hungry Heart immediately showed talent, winning the Goup Two Sweet Embrace Stakes at her second start and finishing fifth in a Golden Slipper at her third start. Narrowly beaten in a Flight Stakes as a spring three-year-old, Hungry Heart would come of age in the following autumn, winning the Group 1 Vinery Stud Stakes and Group 1 Australian Oaks.
Yulong’s international success continued to flow the following year when Magical Lagoon won the 2022 Group 1 Irish Oaks, but it wouldn’t experience further Group 1 success in Australia until earlier this year.
Via Sistina was already a winner of the Group 1 Pretty Polly Stakes before Evergreen Equine paid 2.7 million guineas for her through Tattersalls last year.
The daughter of Fastnet Rock re-emerged in Yulong’s colours in Australia and has been brilliant for her new trainer Chris Waller. She won the Group 1 Ranvet Stakes at her first start for her new stable in March and then chased home Pride Of Jenni in THAT Queen Elizabeth Stakes in April.
On Saturday, she added a fifth Yulong-owned Group 1 success in Australia, all of which have been under Waller’s guidance, when she charged home late to win the Winx Stakes, nabbing stablemate Zougotcha in the closing stages.
Bren O’Brien
It was the style of win that indicated much more success to come in the green and white colours.
Forty minutes later another Yulong-owned mare, Kimochi, claimed the G3 Toy Show Quality. It was her first start for her new owners since being purchased for $2.2 million earlier this year and her trainer Gary Portelli is contemplating a shot at The Everest with the Brave Smash filly.
The Yulong monikers have long since disappeared. Zhang no longer needs them to distinguish his horses. Instead, his green and white colours tell the story of an ambition realised on the racetrack, as it has been in sales rings and breeding barns around the world.
Australian stakes for Yulong’s racing colours:
*precise ownership structure differs
Source: Thoroughbred Breeders Australia
