If bigging up horses can feel like part of the Coolmore gig sometimes, there’s no escaping the suspicion that the world’s most powerful bloodstock operation means it, and then some, when it comes to City of Troy.
Barely had the sweat started drying on Aidan O’Brien’s latest superstar after his Dewhurst Stakes romp on Saturday than a mountain of expectation as to what he might achieve as a three-year-old got lumped onto him.
Although City Of Troy remains happily ignorant of his new status as the sport’s latest ‘second coming’, those around him presumably couldn’t but know the impact of their extravagant praise.
Having an eye on future stallion brochures has always prompted some lavish claims for the best of Ballydoyle. Sometimes they’ve been justified and occasionally the backfire frightened more than the horses – Air Force Blue anyone?
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But on the back of his record-equalling eighth victory in Europe’s most prestigious two-year-old prize, O’Brien’s visible excitement about a horse that promises to be the best he’s ever trained brimmed with genuine fervour.
That it’s been no secret for some time down Ballydoyle way was underlined by part owner Michael Tabor’s dropping of racing’s very own ‘F’ bomb. Thirteen years after Frankel added the Dewhurst to what became an unbeaten benchmark career, Tabor was happy to get his prediction in first.
“He really is our Frankel,” he announced. “I know the way Aidan speaks. We’re all optimists but his horse is special. No question he’s the real deal. That’s what we feel at this moment. Maybe down the line we’ll have egg on our face, but I like to talk before the event, and I really feel this horse could be anything.”
Comparisons with Frankel mean ranking with the highest-rated horse of the modern era, and a reminder that for all of the champions among the more than 4,000 winners O’Brien has saddled he has yet to put a racehorse through his hands that has truly come to define an era.
The two undisputed such talents in recent decades are England’s Frankel and Ireland’s Sea The Stars whose pristine 2009 campaign left an impression of freakish natural talent dominating through the expense of only 85 per cent of his capacity.
O’Brien famously threw everything at Sea The Stars to no avail. His Zoffany got closer than anyone to Frankel at Royal Ascot in 2011, although perhaps not as close might have been had fortune worked in O’Brien’s favour.
The tale of how Coolmore supremo John Magnier and the late Prince Khalid Abdullah agreed that some of the latter’s mares would visit Galileo and then they’d take in turns to have first pick of the resultant yearlings has become a racing legend.
There mightn’t have been an actual toss of the coin involved but the Prince did go first in 2009 and opting to keep a callow son of Kind yielded both Frankel and history.
O’Brien has contended himself with rewriting racing’s record books although it remains the case that his highest-rated talent continues to be Hawk Wing through a wide-margin Lockinge rout two decade ago.
Now he’s clearly convinced that all things being equal he has the best prospect he’s ever had, maybe even one that could ultimately prove to be the best anyone’s ever had.
“We’ve never had a horse where we don’t know where the limit is. We usually push them to the limit, but we never could find his limit. We’ve never, ever had a horse before like that.
“He is the best two-year-old we’ve trained, there’s no doubt. He’s by Justify and it’s a Justify trait – they just keep going,” O’Brien said after his gamble in running the new paragon on soft ground paid off in style.
Bitter experience has proven how reputational graveyards are full of indisputable greats that never were. Bookmakers have profited from such giddy excitement far too often for 10-1 quotes about City of Troy becoming the Triple Crown winner since Nijinsky to grab more headlines than bets.
There’s also the humdrum reality that the form value of beating Alyannabi by 3½ lengths is very unlikely to be established this season. Pinatubo’s sky-high 128 rating at the end of his two-year-old career in 2020 didn’t translate into three-year-old superstardom.
However, it’s a very humdrum sport that can’t allow for a calm and prodigious young equine talent to generate widespread skittishness among humans desperate to acclaim an exceptional champion.
Ryan Moore is no one’s idea of a volatile hype-merchant but even he couldn’t be stony-faced after Saturday’s performance.
“A special horse,” was the English rider’s verdict. “He’s a very rare horse. For me, Frankel is the best racehorse I ever saw and I stupidly said after this horse won the July Course I hadn’t seen a two-year-old do that since him.
“But that was a silly comparison to make – this horse has a long way to go yet and he’s going to have to carry on doing what he’s done so far.”
Anticipation about City of Troy maybe doing just that will shorten the winter for many.
