Hungry Heart & Converge
“All comers. All grounds. All beaten.”
The commentary as the great Frankel (Galileo) closed his unbeaten 14-start career in the 2012 Champion Stakes (Gr 1, 1m 2f) at Ascot said it plain and said it all.
Similarly, there was no great mystery, no reading between the pedigree lines, which led to two offspring of the great horse winning black-type races at Randwick last Saturday – Hungry Heart claiming a second successive Group 1 in the Australian Oaks (2400m), and two-year-old Converge taking the Listed Fernhill Stakes (1600m).
The breeders under whom they race – Yulong Investments’ Zhang Yuesheng (Hungry Heart) and Evergreen Stud Farm’s Tony Bott (Converge) – are, like millions of racing lovers around the world, unabashed, card-carrying Frankel fans. And while racetrack success is of course no guarantee of stud glory, the highest Racing Post-rated horse in history continues to make impressive strides as a sire.
Beginning stud duties in England in 2013, Frankel – who stands at Juddmonte for £175,0000 (Approx. AU$313,000) – became the fastest European sire to reach 40 Group winners in history. He finished tenth on the Great Britain general sires list last year but, in a nod to Hungry Heart’s boom season, was third among three-year-old sires, with 23 winners – four at stakes level – from 44 starters.
In Australia, Frankel currently sits 36th among three-year-old sires this season, but the standing grows more impressive considering his limited exposure. With just eight runners – 34 of the 35 above him have had from 29 to 105 runners – the son of Galileo has sired two three-year-old winners, which includes Hungry Heart’s three stakes victories. (Frankel also appears to have an exciting four-year-old staying prospect here in Listed Christmas Cup winner Significance, recently transferred to Peter Moody in Melbourne).
Frankel’s progeny thus far appear better at three than at two. Although he has sired the winner of a 1600-metre two-year-old Group 1 in Japan this year through Grenadier Guards, he finished 12th among two-year-old sires in Britain last year, compared with his podium finish for three-year-olds. Still, it is telling to note both Hungry Heart and Converge did not lack early zip, each winning over 1200 metres in town – in Hungry Heart’s case in last year’s Sweet Embrace Stakes (Gr 2, 1200m), before her fine fifth in the Golden Slipper (Gr 1, 1200m).
Put simply, Zhang can’t get enough of his equine idol. The financially powerful breeder has bred around a dozen mares to Frankel in the past four years to bring back to Australia in foal, the oldest progeny now being three.
“I think that was basically it with Mr Zhang,” says Sam Fairgray, chief operating officer at Yulong Stud, an 1100-acre property in Victorian stud country near Seymour, which stands four Group 1-winning stallions plus new recruit Written Tycoon (Iglesia) and is home to 230 mares.
“Frankel was just such a phenomenal racehorse, he’d started well as a stallion, and Mr Zhang thought it would be a novel idea to take a couple of mares to him and get his progeny down here. And Frankel’s done exceptionally well with a small number of runners here in Australia. His numbers are also strong in the UK, and he’s looking like a sensational stallion.
“There’s not many stallions that can actually be successful in both hemispheres. Danehill was able to do that, and Frankel is certainly doing that now.”
Hungry Heart’s dam, Harlech, by Pivotal (Polar Falcon), was one of four mares Zhang bought in Europe in 2016 and sent to Frankel, securing her on bloodstock agent Sheamus Mills’ advice for some £60,000 (Approx. AU$108,000) at the Tattersalls July Sale, before arranging a southern hemisphere-time breeding a few weeks later. Back in Australia, in 2019, Harlech’s first foal sold at the Gold Coast to Belmont Bloodstock for $300,000, before Yulong bought her back and named her Hungry Heart.
With Harlech’s race record for Godolphin consisting entirely of a fifth in a Salisbury maiden, it could be fair to say Zhang was relying more on Frankel’s blood than the dam’s. Harlech’s mother Zoowraa, by Azamour (Night Shift), did win a Listed 1400-metre race at Newbury and threw the Group 3-winning mare Maamora (Dubawi). But you need to dig down to Hungry Heart’s fifth dam to strike gold, with Ribbon (His Majesty) producing 1988 Belmont (Gr 1, 12f) and Preakness Stakes- (Gr 1, 9.5f) winner Risen Star (Secretariat).
On nicks, however, there is some dynamite in the immediate past, with Harlech being by Pivotal. The cross of Frankel over Pivotal mares has also produced no less a horse than the champion Cracksman, along with Michael Stoute’s Group 1-winning mare Veracious.
“Hungry Heart was always very athletic, but she’s really matured a lot in the last six months,” Fairgray told It’s In The Blood.
“Not many horses win a Group 2 over 1200 metres at two, then win a Group 1 over 2400 metres at three. You’d have to think Frankel has given her the stamina and she’s got a bit of speed and turn of foot from her dam line.”
Harlech now also has a Snitzel two-year-old colt and a yearling filly that Yulong has retained to race, and is in foal to the stud’s new sire Alabama Express (Redoute’s Choice).
Converge’s female line contains some topline winners, but they’re far away in terms of time and distance.
He’s the first foal of his Irish-bred dam Conversely, by Shamardal (Giant’s Causeway), a mare who earned just three placings in eight starts. Her dam, Melhor Ainda (Pulpit), at least won black type in the US, and was second in a American Oaks (Gr 1, 10f), enough to help her realise US$2.4 million at a Keeneland broodmare sale in 2007.
Melhor Ainda was out of Argentinian mare Potrinner (Potrillazo), who won a Group 1 in her home country before being exported to the US, where she also produced Danon Go Go (Aldebaran), a stakes winner in Japan. But Potrinner’s dam Chaldee (Banner Sport) – Converge’s fourth dam – was something of a Blue Hen, producing three Group 1-winning full siblings in Potridee (Potrillazo) (a triple top-level winner), Potrichal, and Potrizaris, the 1998 winner of Argentina’s most important classic, the Argentine Derby (Gr 1, 2500m).
All this became news to Tony Bott after he’d essentially bought Converge.
Bott had sent his star broodmare – four-time Group 1-winning Kiwi Princess Coup (Encosta De Lago) – for a southern hemisphere covering by Frankel in 2017, hoping for a colt. But Princess Coup was already back in Australia when it was learned she’d be having a filly.
“I made a mistake and brought her home straight away after the mating,” says Bott, father of Converge’s co-trainer Adrian. “I should’ve left her there and if she’d had a filly I would’ve gone again. Hindsight’s a wonderful thing.”
Soon after Princess Coup’s sex test, however, Bott had a second chance. The 2018 Magic Millions National Broodmare Sale on the Gold Coast included Conversely, being sold by Coolmore. She was in foal to Frankel and had been confirmed to be carrying a colt.
“Frankel captured my imagination like everyone else when he was racing, and I was keen to get a colt by him,” Bott says. “I’d looked at a couple of Frankel colts through the sales ring and nothing really excited me. But here was an opportunity on our doorstep to get a Frankel colt, and not have to send a mare overseas and go through all that hassle.”
Conversely, in fact, was passed in, failing to meet a $300,000 reserve, but the determined Bott secured her later for around $250,000. Three months afterwards, the prized Frankel colt arrived.
Bott admits he “didn’t do that much research” in buying Conversely. In fact, with the Frankel colt duly foaled, he quickly tried to sell her on. He’s thankful she was passed in, at a reserve of $50,000 which seems tiny now.
Bott gained more than ample compensation for his major outlay of sending Princess Coup to England. Her Frankel filly sold for $670,000 to James Harron Bloodstock at last year’s Inglis Easter sale.
And, in the end, Bott’s keenly-sought Frankel colt, Converge, was gelded. Judging by Saturday’s win, however, that difficult decision could be about to pay off handsomely on the racetrack.
Meanwhile, Bott sold Conversely’s second foal, by Churchill (Galileo), for just $28,000 as a weanling last year. “Someone’s got themselves a very cheap colt by the look of it now,” he says. The mare now has an Invader (Snitzel) colt on the ground, and is in foal to Divine Prophet (Choisir).
Trevor Marshallsea is the best-selling author of Makybe Diva and Winx – Biography of a Champion. Click on the links to purchase yours.