With four stakes winners, including a Group 1 victory, it was a bottle green blitz for Yulong across Australia on Saturday. Recent history suggests that with 29 Australian stakes wins in the past 13 months, it might be a scene we get well used to by the end of the racing season.
Around this time last year, Run The Numbers published an article which highlighted Yulong’s growing influence as an owner, after it had marked its fifth Group 1 winner in Australia.
On Saturday, 53 weeks after that article was written, the Yulong colours saluted for the 19th time in an elite Australian race, continuing an extraordinary run for the Zhang Yuesheng-owned outfit.
Champion Yulong mares Via Sistina and Treasurethe Moment have won the first two Group 1 races of the new Australian season and are legitimately the best two horses in Australia right now. The former is $2.20 favourite to win a second Cox Plate, while the latter at $6 is considered the only real chance of preventing that from happening.
The four-year-old, the VRC and ATC Oaks winner of last season, stamped her credentials when she made light work of her rivals in Saturday’s Memsie Stakes, her first run in open age. She became the first four-year-old mare to win the Memsie since it was elevated to Group 1 status in 2013.
Saturday was a remarkable day for Yulong, even by its extraordinarily strong standards. Another star mare, Magic Time, privately purchased last spring, won the Group 3 Cockram Stakes and looks well poised to add a third Group 1 title to her resume this spring.
Tycoon Star is now on the second line of betting for the Coolmore Stud Stakes after winning the Group 3 McNeil Stakes impressively, while another three-year-old Grand Prairie won a rough and tumble version of the Group 3 Up and Coming Stakes.
All four Yulong stakes winners on Saturday are with different stables, with Matt Laurie, Ben, Will and JD Hayes, Grahame Begg and Peter Snowden.
But what is significant is that three of the four were by Yulong stallions.
With every win, Treasurethe Moment is furthering the value of Yulong’s Alabama Express, who now stands for $66,000.
Tycoon Star and Grand Prairie are both from the first Yulong conceived crop of Written Tycoon. Tycoon Star was bred by Iskander Racing and purchased by Yulong as a yearling. Yulong liked him so much it went and purchased his dam, Miss Iano, last year.
Grand Prairie was bred by Yulong from the Group 1 winner Viddora, who was purchased for $2.55 million in 2020.
Written Tycoon’s current four-year-old crop, conceived at Arrowfield, is already his most successful when it comes to stakes winners with 13, but his current crop of three-year-olds already has five stakes winners.
Three of those have come already this season, the most of any sire across all groups this season, and he sits just behind Zoustar on the General Sires Table.
Given the quality of mares Written Tycoon received over the past few years at Yulong, it was always going to be the case that he was going to have another uptick in fortune. Given that, and the already noted performance of that Arrowfield crop, it wouldn’t surprise to see him contending strongly for the champion sires title this season.
All up, Yulong now has 55 stakes wins in its colours in Australia, 29 of which have come since the start of last season. As mentioned, 19 have been at the top level, with Via Sistina winning nine and Treasurethe Moment now has four.
There have been nine Group 2 victories, 15 at Group 3 level and 12 in Listed company.
Of Yulong’s seven individual Australian Group 1 winners, just one, Treasurethe Moment, was bred by Zhang, but we can expect that to change as the better quality of crops from its star stallions come through in the next couple of years.
Last season’s 13 Group 1 winners by a single owner was a record in Australia. However, given the way the new season has started and the army of impeccably bred homebreds, combined with star imports, at Yulong’s disposal, you get the feeling it might be a mark tested again by the time we get to the end of 2025/2026.
Yulong-owned Australian stakes winners
Source: Thoroughbred Breeders Australia
