Arrowfield’s long view, reflected with respect in Yulong’s stallion strategy

Cover image courtesy of The Image Is Everything

As the first major yearling sale of the season concluded on the Gold Coast, one of the clearer strategic narratives to emerge was not just about prices, but about roster construction. In backing multiple sons of the same elite sire, Yulong is leaning into a model long familiar to Australian breeders - one refined decades earlier at Arrowfield Stud.

Arrowfield’s decision to consolidate around Danehill (USA) reshaped the Australian stallion landscape, prioritising depth within a proven sireline over breadth for its own sake. Yulong’s investment in sons of Lord Kanaloa (Jpn) reflects a similar philosophy, and at this year’s Magic Millions, early market feedback for Tagaloa and first-season sire Diatonic suggested buyers are engaging with that approach.

Tagaloa’s fillies in full flight

With the first sale down, the Magic Millions Gold Coast Yearling Sale reflected well on G1 Blue Diamond Stakes winner Tagaloa. The Yulong resident achieved his highest priced yearling to date when Lot 581, a daughter of champion mare More Joyous (NZ) (More Than Ready {USA}), made $625,000 to the bid of Dalziel Bloodstock and Moody Racing.

Yulong offered both that filly and also Lot 964, the second foal from G3 Newcastle Newmarket Handicap winner Wandabaa (Wandjina), who sold to Spicer Thoroughbreds for $400,000.

Both prices outrank Tagaloa’s season high in 2025 of $270,000 - also for a filly - which is better again than the top price of $240,000 paid in 2024 for a filly from his first crop. It also led to an average price of 13.1 times the stallion's 2023 service fee.

Defying the usual trajectory for young sires, each crop of the stallion’s progeny to date has generated greater total spend at auction than the last.

Gallery: Highest priced Tagaloa yearlings at the 2026 Magic Millions Gold Coast Yearling Sale, images courtesy of Magic Millions

“He’s a horse that we have always trusted in, and we have had good reason to do so," said Harry King, Yulong’s nominations manager, when reflecting on the stallion’s 2026 Magic Millions results.

Tagaloa ticked the box of a juvenile stakes winner last season with Listed Fernhill Handicap winner Spicy Lu, and backed it up this spring with Group wins from both her and Salty Pearl.

Add to that a further six stakes performers and recent unbeaten juvenile Moana Spirit - retained to race by Yulong, and last start winner of the $150,000 Geelong Diamond - and the team couldn’t be more pleased with the stallion’s progress.

“We have her with the McEvoys and she looks like a red-hot chance for the Blue Diamond, so hopefully she can emulate her sire there,” King said of Moana Spirit, who skips the G3 Blue Diamond Preview (fillies) this weekend, thanks to the Geelong Diamond’s golden ticket into the grand final.

“What breeders and buyers like to see is a stallion’s stock doing well at two, which Tagaloa has delivered, but after seeing his offspring in full flight during the spring carnival, people have been taking more notice of him.”

It has been the stallion’s fillies who have been in high demand, true to spring form. His daughter Lot 1113 pushed the budget of Tony Ottobre’s Cape Schanck Stud to top Book 2 for $270,000, matching his season-wide high water mark from last year.

The spectre of Mr Prospector

“It’s usually Deep Impact’s line that we see down here, or the Screen Hero line through Maurice that does so well in Australia,” King said. Like Tagaloa, Screen Hero (Jpn) boasts Sunday Silence as his damsire.

“We have just pivoted one sireline over and leaned into the influence of Lord Kanaloa.”

“As an industry, it can sometimes feel like you are all trying to tie the same shoelace. Doing things differently and trying out new ideas is what has made Australian racing so great.”

Born in Australia at Arrowfield Stud to imported Heart’s Cry (Jpn) mare Vasilissa (Jpn), Tagaloa combines two of the Northern Hemisphere’s most prominent sirelines; his damsire is a son of Sunday Silence (USA), who left an indelible mark on Japanese breeding, and Lord Kanaloa is a member of the Mr Prospector (USA) sireline.

Like the Northern Hemisphere, Australia is intimately familiar with and fond of Mr Prospector’s descendants; his sireline has produced Hussonet (USA) and Street Cry (Ire), who has left successful sire sons in Pride of Dubai, Street Boss (USA), and Per Incanto (USA) in Australasia.

Other descendants with an Australian presence are Dubawi (Ire) and his son Too Darn Hot (GB), and red-hot American sire Gun Runner (USA) traces back to Mr Prospector via the latter’s influential son Fappiano (USA).

Lord Kanaloa’s branch of the sireline is underrepresented in Australia; Yulong stand his only three sons in the country - the third being Panthalassa (Jpn) - and he has only a handful of active broodmares in the studbook, most of whom have been bred or imported by Arrowfield. His sire King Kamehameha (Jpn) has an even smaller pool of representatives.

From limited numbers, Lord Kanaloa has had success in Australia; from 25 starters, he has produced 18 winners (72% winners to runners), who have earned approximately 5.7% of his progeny’s total prizemoney between them.

“We have seen in the past that Heart’s Cry works with Redoute’s Choice line mares, and we are seeing that work for Tagaloa as well, but also we have seen that doubling up Mr Prospector in the pedigree is working extremely well for his progeny.”

Spicy Lu and Salty Pearl are both exemplary of the latter mating technique; Mr Prospector appears in Spicy Lu’s pedigree through her second dam’s sire Machiavellian (USA), and on Salty Pearl’s page, he appears above damsire Sebring thanks to his son Woodman (USA), damsire to More Than Ready (USA).

“If you're a breeder with a mare that's carrying either Redoute’s or Mr Prospector, you can go into the breeding season with both Diatonic and Tagaloa on your radar, and you have concrete proof for Tagaloa that it really works,” King said.

And for Tagaloa, another prominent broodmare sire appears a step further down his page in Pivotal (GB).

“He's got the numbers coming through, he's got the quality coming through, and he has the support of most major Australasian stables. They have all had a look at the Tagaloas and put their hand up to buy one.”

Going back to the well

Their longstanding and successful ties with Japan is not the only thing of inspiration about Arrowfield Stud. King compared their roster structure to the way that Yulong have built theirs.

“At one point, Arrowfield had three sons of Danehill on their roster,” he said. “Mr Messara leaned into that sireline, and now look at the success they have produced in Australia. To look at our own business model, we are in the fortunate position to stand three sons of Lord Kanaloa, all of whom were exceptional horses on the track.”

Diatonic, who raced for five seasons and earned over $5 million in prizemoney, is the next Lord Kanaloa stallion in the plan.

“He raced from two until seven in Japan, which as we all know is an exceptionally hard, tough, fierce racing jurisdiction, particularly in the sprinter-miler realm,” King said. “For him to be doing that for five years, you have to tip your cap to him, and he's another outcross, so that's a huge tick for what we're trying to achieve here in Australia.”

“If Diatonic had come on to our radar a few years earlier, dare I say we would have seen him be extremely competitive in a race like the All Aged Stakes or a CF Orr. We feel very confident that he would have stepped up against Australasia's best at the top level.”

His preferred distance is part of what makes King and the Yulong team so confident in their belief that Diatonic will be successful with the Australian mare population.

“If you look at the rest of our roster, Alabama Express and Pierata were both exceptional 1400-metre horses, they were both Group 1 winners over that distance,” King said. “It’s a good sweet spot to stand a stallion.

“On top of that, he could win from anywhere in the field. He could win leading in front, or he could come from the back, or he could win from the middle. There are many strings to his bow. He wasn't just a one-trick pony and his race record is a testament to that.”

To compare him on pedigree to the proven Tagaloa, Diatonic boasts Sunday Silence as his damsire, and carries Storm Bird (Can) in the dam lines on both halves of the page.

“I think we are in a very exciting spot with him,” King said. “People came to see his progeny at Magics and they spent big.”

Gallery: Two of Diatonic's yearlings to go through the ring at the 2026 Magic Millions Gold Coast Yearling Sale, images courtesy of Magic Millions

Another reward for Yulong’s Gold Coast draft; Diatonic finished the sale second only to Anamoe on sales averages amongst the first season sires, with a top price of $650,000 when Matt Laurie Racing and Willannah Park Bloodstock signed the docket for Lot 826, a daughter of dual Group 1 winner Snapdancer (Choisir). The stallion's average sales price sat at an impressive 19.8 times his initial service fee.

And it should hearten other breeders to see Yulong bullish enough about their stallions’ futures to invest in offspring from other farms - in conjunction with Eric Lucas, the entity spent $220,000 to acquire Lot 951, a Diatonic colt from the family of dual Group 3 winner Tulip (Pierro), offered by Bowness Stud.

Global thinking

Technically speaking, Diatonic’s Magic Millions yearlings are not his first crop of foals born on Australian soil, but they are the first bred on Southern Hemisphere time.

Upon his initial arrival in Australia in February 2023, the stallion was visited by a handful of mares on Northern Hemisphere time, resulting in a crop of 19 born the following Australian autumn.

Those newly turned 2-year-olds aren’t the only foals at Yulong born out of season that year or in the years since, as the stud pulls off a plan to be competitive with their homebreds in both hemispheres.

“The main goal for these horses is to go to Europe,” King shared. “We have had success in the past with Australian-bred horses - we bred an I Am Invincible filly called Lady Hamana a few years ago.

“We had her in work down here as a young horse with Matt Laurie and, on his advice, we put her on a flight, and now we have a European stakes winner by I Am Invincible.”

Lady Hamana (I Am Invincible) won the Listed Scurry Stakes at Sandown and ran fourth in the Listed Criterium de Vitesse at Longchamp, both five-furlong sprints that have churned out a number of high class horses - the former was among the early wins of multiple Group 1 winner Battaash (Ire) (Dark Angel {Ire}).

“It’s an opportunity to try something new and to send horses by our sires to Europe, and if it plays out well, we could shuttle one of our stallions up there,” said King.

“We are always looking at different opportunities and what we can do to maximise the success of our product and our brand. We are thankful to be in the position to do so, and we have a very forward-thinking team around us, led by the Zhangs, that warrants the opportunity to try new things.”