The apparent paragon that is City Of Troy was about four rows back as the second lot sauntered around before going out to the Ballydoyle gallops on Wednesday morning. And as the saying goes, if you didn’t know, you wouldn’t know; just another brown horse among 50 others. Except for the tail.
“He has a black mane but there’s grey in his tail. I never saw that before. That’s a bit different,” said Aidan O’Brien, and not for the first time. ‘Different’ is the adjective repeatedly used around the most exciting and valuable racehorse on the planet right now.
He is so distinct he might prove to be the very best through O’Brien’s hands in his 28 years at the helm of the world’s most famed training academy. Unbeaten champion two-year-old’s facing into their Classic campaign are nothing new here. But this guy seems to be just different.
Even in March, the objectives mapped out for him are unusual. The plan is to go for the 2,000 Guineas at Newmarket in May. Then, the Epsom Derby in June which is so far, so familiar. But following that O’Brien hopes to send him to Saratoga in New York for the Travers Stakes on dirt.
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The logic from his Coolmore ownership is to “expose” what they are convinced is a preternatural talent to the world, a horse so gifted that surface, distance and maybe even hemisphere are immaterial. In short, to try to turn City Of Troy into an all-time great of the game.
One of the ownership, Michael Tabor, labelled City of Troy “our Frankel” after he landed last October’s Dewhurst Stakes in Newmarket.
Where other trainers might have blessed Tabor for fuelling hype, O’Brien ran with it, and shovelled a bit more on himself in a way that suggested it was about more than snappy quotes for any future stallion brochure.
This son of Coolmore’s US-based Justify was different then and a wet winter has done nothing to dampen expectations.
Leading the line as City Of Troy walked and trotted on Wednesday was last year’s Classic hero Auguste Rodin. About to begin a four-year-old campaign in Dubai later this month, the dual-Derby, Champion Stakes, and Breeders’ Cup hero is a proven top-notch talent.
What he isn’t is the sort of all-time great represented in this part of the world this century by Frankel and Sea The Stars. City Of Troy might trail Auguste Rodin in the morning but Coolmore’s betting he will ultimately leave him in his wake in the reputational stakes.
O’Brien has skin in that game too. The 54-year-old has rewritten the rules of racing success in almost three decades at Ballydoyle, moulding raw Coolmore talent into Classic winners.
They included Galileo, top-class on the track and the ultimate financial gold mine at stud who sired Frankel. On official handicap ratings, though, the best horse O’Brien has had remains Hawk Wing, a brilliant performer on a single stat-busting day at Newbury 21 years ago, but with no aspiration towards all-time great status.
It’s hardly the bitterest of ironies that perhaps the horse O’Brien has had that’s most entitled to such ranking is the venerable old jumper Istabraq. But still, the prospect of such a rare creature on the flat would be an apt cherry on top of his own benchmark career.
No one knows better though how the Classic picture can fluctuate at this time of year. Paddington won a handicap at Naas this time in 2023 before proceeding to five Group One successes. There are almost seven weeks to the Newmarket Guineas, plenty of time for circumstances to intervene.
Later on Wednesday came news that plans to exercise City Of Troy and other top three-year-old prospects after racing at Naas on Sunday might get derailed. Naas is currently unfit to race and there’s up to 25mm more rainfall forecast. Not even City Of Troy might relish that.
“He does work very different. Horses are working in very bad ground at the moment. It’s deep. Horses shouldn’t like that, but he is just powering through it,” O’Brien said.
“He’s done very well over the winter. He’s a medium-sized horse to look at, but when you stand into him, he’s much bigger than you think, which is the sign of a very well-proportioned horse.
“When John [Magnier] and the lads are thinking like that, they are happy to push him out there and see what he can do. If it went well in the Guineas, we’re happy to step up to a mile and a half in the Derby, and then come back to 10 furlongs for the Travers on dirt.”
Such a global perspective is no coincidence as O’Brien’s 2024 to date already indicates.
A top-flight win for Warm Heart in Florida in January was followed by a first success in Saudi Arabia with Tower Of London in a $2.5 million handicap. Aguste Rodin will take on Japanese star Liberty Island in the upcoming Sheema Classic and won’t travel to Meydan on his own.
“The world has gone very small now, which is good. The horses are able to get together and compete together. Then, they can be all rated and handicapped,” O’Brien said.
Ordinarily, other Ballydoyle prospects such as Henry Longfellow and River Tiber could expect their share of the Classic spotlight. But if one colt with his distinctive tail doesn’t top ratings lists of all sorts by season’s end it will be very different indeed to what’s anticipated.
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