After redeeming his sky-high reputation in the world’s premier Classic, the son of Triple Crown winner Justify will run in the Coral-Eclipse Stakes – with the tantalising prospect of future outings on US dirt still on the table
Who’s next? Every year the same question, offered in hope rather than expectation, that universal currency of racing. The next Arkle? The next Secretariat? The next Frankel? And the answer will almost never be the one we want, but that doesn’t stop us asking.
North America recently had Flightline, whose fleeting, transitory brilliance put him in the pantheon. Now Europe is offering up City Of Troy, who surged to a hugely impressive victory in the Derby at Epsom, the son of Justify justifying favouritism in brilliantly redemptive fashion after his dreadful performance in the 2,000 Guineas at Newmarket. There, he clocked off at halfway before trailing in a distant ninth to ensure there were as many doubters as there were believers at Epsom, despite his odds.
Had he trained on from two to three? Would he stay beyond a mile? Was he just another juvenile rocket who had fallen abruptly to earth in the old familiar way?
Then City Of Troy answered all those questions, and in doing so with such bravura brio – cruising, with seemingly plenty in reserve, by 2¾ lengths – prompted the age-old one. Is City Of Troy the one we have been waiting for, the heir to the ages, the next wonderhorse? So here we go again, the usual spring in our step.
In a contravention of the old adage, no horse is born great, but a very few achieve greatness and many others have greatness thrust upon them – often in an enthusiastically premature fashion by you, by me, by those in the grandstand or those in the press room. But when certain sections of racing society provoke and promote the idea, reinforce the delicious possibilities, everyone leans in to listen.
“He really is our Frankel. We’re all optimists, but this horse is special. No question, he’s the real deal,” said Michael Tabor, long-serving member of the Coolmore crew who have campaigned champions for decades, about City Of Troy after the colt had crowned an unbeaten juvenile season in the Dewhurst Stakes at Newmarket last October.
Okay. Put that down, if you like, to the wishful, wistful thinking of a starry-eyed owner, although Tabor is anything but naive. But then the trainer gave his opinion.
‘We’ve never had a more exciting two-year-old’
“We’ve never had a more exciting two-year-old,” said Aidan O’Brien, who shapes the careers of embryo superstars on an annual basis. Admittedly, O’Brien has been known to overegg the pudding at times, to boyishly play up where another might play down, but then the jockey cleared his throat.
“I think he is a very rare horse,” said Ryan Moore, and Moore has never been the type to stoop to hyperbole. Moore says little – and very little of that with any notable vivacity – but City Of Troy had driven him to an unaccustomed lyricism.
That was City Of Troy at the end of a three-race two-year-old season conducted solely at seven furlongs, comprising a maiden at the Curragh, the G2 Superlative Stakes on the July Course at Newmarket (by 6½ lengths) and the Dewhurst on the Rowley Mile by 3½ lengths. Each performance was characterised by a powerful zest for the job, a tendency to race forwardly – he made all in the Dewhurst – with a strong finishing flourish that took him clear of his pursuers.
“He has great presence, he is strong and powerful,” a measured O’Brien told the Racing Post after that debut score in Ireland. Just two weeks later, in the winner’s enclosure at Newmarket, the tone was different.
“City Of Troy is a very unusual horse, he’s unbelievable mentally,” said O’Brien. “Whatever speed you want to go he can keep pushing, and he can go up and sit with anything we have. He looks an incredibly special horse with unnatural ability.”
Then followed his Dewhurst rout, leading to the lavish praise outlined earlier. City Of Troy went into winter hibernation as champion European two-year-old, although the official assessor did not share O’Brien’s ‘most exciting’ label, rating him a pound below his Ballydoyle predecessor Johannesburg, who led the standings in 2001.
So far, so super. Yet anyone with any experience of the sport knows the difference between strong two-year-old form and its equivalent at three. To use an example relevant in this year of elections, juvenile form is no more reliable than a politician’s promise, non-definitive, designed for allure but with no firm basis regarding what may happen in the future.
Everyone has seen champion two-year-olds fail to live up to themselves at three – O’Brien himself has trained several of that ilk, including Johannesburg – and it is always wise to temper enthusiasm with a little hard-won cynicism when discussing the subject.
However, bulletins from Ballydoyle as winter turned to spring had even the sceptics wiping a Kool-Aid smile from around their mouths.
‘Everything about him is very different’
“This horse is very unique,” O’Brien told veteran turf writer Brough Scott, and the trainer can be forgiven the unnecessary modifier. “He could do anything. Everything about him is very different from anything else we have had.”
City Of Troy reportedly worked like a world-beater in the build-up to his seasonal reappearance in the 2,000 Guineas, the bookmakers taking no chances with odds of 4-6 for what was largely perceived as a fait accompli. But fate had other ideas; it all went wrong.
He raced noticeably keenly at Newmarket, contributing to the pace, and after half a mile was visibly emptying out, Moore’s increasingly energetic assistance from the saddle provoking no response.
He fell away as swiftly as Icarus, heading for a hard landing, his no-go no-show a surprise even to those who had thought themselves accustomed to the likelihood of such surprises. Frankel? Frankly, no.
The mild-mannered O’Brien was aghast, the rug whipped from underneath him. He blamed himself for the colt’s defeat, hinting that he too might have fallen under the spell of the cult.
‘Nothing about the run made any sense’
“I think maybe I might have left him too fresh,” he said. “I probably treated him like too much of a god through the winter and because of that he was too fresh. Nothing about the run made any sense.
“He’s such a good horse that everything he was doing was at half-pace, whereas most other horses would be at full pace doing what he was doing. Because of that I probably hadn’t done enough with him.”
Whatever the reasons for City Of Troy’s malfunction, confidence in the colt remained high. Plan A was unwaveringly pursued, the Derby still the target, the sky that had fallen in on City Of Troy and the Coolmore was still setting the limit to their ambitions.
Faith is not always rewarded, not every time, but sometimes, and this time, for City Of Troy turned the Newmarket debacle into an Epsom parade and thrillingly fulfilled the raison d’etre of every three-year-old middle-distance colt.
The performance re-elevated City Of Troy into the upper echelon of the Thoroughbred Racing Commentary’s exclusive Global Rankings and extended O’Brien’s record tally of Derby winners into double figures. The new entry on the Irishman’s chart went straight to the top, No.1 with a bullet, according to the relieved, vindicated, unusually garrulous O’Brien.
‘Listen, he is just an incredible horse’
“Is he our best Derby winner?” he mused, with nine others to choose from. “I would say no doubt, because he has the cruise, he has the balance, and he quickens and he stays. I don’t think there is any doubt about that. Listen, he is just an incredible horse.”
City Of Troy was certainly a star turn at Epsom, although it should be noted that in the build-up the race had been considered a relatively workaday Derby and the three most impressive trial winners – Hidden Law, Arabian Crown and Economics – were absent. His was a superlative performance, but one superlative performance does not a wonderhorse make.
But what comes next may well do. The first objective for City Of Troy is the Coral-Eclipse at Sandown on July 6, the route taken by Mill Reef, Dancing Brave and Sea The Stars, three legitimate candidates for the label ‘wonderhorse’.
After that, his itinerary is likely to diverge from the conventional and embrace the sensational, taking him across the Atlantic for an audacious raid on the biggest races in the US.
The driver behind this idea is his sire Justify, winner of the US Triple Crown in 2018 and rapidly becoming one of the most sought-after stallions in the world. The hope nurtured by Coolmore is that City Of Troy has not only inherited Justify’s excellence as a racer but also his affinity for dirt, to which end the showpiece $1.25 million Travers Stakes at Saratoga over ten furlongs – the ‘Midsummer Derby’ for three-year-olds – at the end of August has long been viewed as a suitable target.
Although the Coolmore team also have Chad Brown-trained Sierra Leone earmarked for the Travers, timing is on the Irish-based colt’s side. This year’s US Classic crop does not appear historically strong, with the three Triple Crown races once again won by three different horses – Mystik Dan, Seize The Grey and Dornoch – who have been well beaten in a previous or subsequent leg of the series.
The division lacks clarity and a leader, so the temptation to roll the dice with City Of Troy may become irresistible. And not once, but twice.
The enormously prestigious Travers could become a springboard towards the year-defining Breeders’ Cup Classic on the dirt at Del Mar in early November, a race won twice by European raiders – Arcangues in 1993 and Raven’s Pass in 2008, the latter on a synthetic surface – but never by a Derby winner.
‘The biggest dream we could have’
“It would be the biggest dream we could have,” said MV Magnier, son of Coolmore supremo John Magnier. “We’ve tried it several times before and we’ll try it again, and that’s what the sport wants. Racing needs these horses competing with the best; that’s what the people want to see. It would be great for European racing and great for worldwide racing.”
At the start of the year City Of Troy was perceived by Coolmore as a potential British Triple Crown winner, 2,000 Guineas-Derby-St Leger, a throwback series that has not been achieved since Nijinsky swept the board in 1970.
His Guineas flop squashed that notion flat, but a very different treble could yet be within reach – Derby, Travers, Breeders’ Cup Classic, one down, two to go.
If the ‘unique’ City Of Troy uniquely pulls off that unprecedented sweep, there won’t be any more questions about his status as a wonderhorse.
• Visit the Coral-Eclipse webpage and the Ballydoyle page on the Coolmore website
Seven Days in Racing: City Of Troy plans, Mystik Dan latest, Royal Ascot and more …
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