City of Troy can look forward to years of a lucrative stud career after months of preparation and weeks of speculation turned to anticlimax following a split-second slow start that ruined his chance in Saturday night’s Breeders’ Cup Classic.
Once again, an Aidan O’Brien trained turf star found the task of transferring that talent to dirt, against the best Americans on their home patch, much too difficult. And once more it was at the start that the scale of the task got underlined.
Trained throughout his career to relax once the starting gates opened, the habits of City Of Troy’s young lifetime came back to haunt him. Dirt horses used to bursting from the gates like lightening acted as per usual and after a couple of strides the City Of Troy dream had died.
Left struggling behind most of the field, and the unfamiliar kickback thrown up by them, the Irish star could never land a blow, eventually struggling home in eighth behind the US star Sierra Leone, ironically carrying the second Coolmore silks of City Of Troy’s ownership.
It means the colt acclaimed by O’Brien as the best he’s ever trained leaves a curious racing legacy, undoubtedly a top-class performer but never quite as good as his billing suggested, perhaps partly because all eggs were put into the Breeders’ Cup basket.
Often criticised in the past for treating the Classic as an end-of season afterthought, O’Brien & co did the opposite with their latest paragon. Skipping both the Irish Champion Stakes and the Arc for Del Mar in November was a bold gamble that failed to come off.
After what ultimately proved to be City Of Troy’s career peak in York’s International there were suggestions that Ryan Moore argued the case for targeting the Arc beforehand. Quickly faced with an impossible task on Saturday night, the English jockey might even have tasted some bitter vindication, along with residue from all that kickback.
“He got a lot of kickback, which he hadn’t experienced, which was hard for him. I think he was very brave to keep up,” Moore reported.
O’Brien was quick to blame himself for City Of Troy’s abject flop in May’s 2,000 Guineas in Newmarket and was in similar mode on Saturday.
“He was left at the start where he lost three lengths, and we didn’t have him prepared to break quickly enough. We thought we had, but we hadn’t. He inspired us as a horse that could do well in the Classic, and it was so sporting of the lads to run him in it.
“When you get back that far on a dirt surface you can’t do anything about it. I should have had him coming out quicker, it just left Ryan with no chance really. I need to step it up a bit, don’t I, have them a little bit better prepared. We’re learning all the time. Hopefully we’ll try harder next year,” he said.
However, after 18 failures in America’s richest race, and still no closer than in the first of them, when Giants Causeway was runner-up in 2000, the suspicion will grow that pitching elite turf talents straight on to dirt and presuming on a miracle is presuming too much.
That Coolmore ultimately won with a colt prepared his whole life for the job of running on dirt might prove a factor in future planning.
But for now City Of Troy heads to the breeding sheds in Tipperary with a CV full of brilliance but not the sort of all-time great credentials that comparisons with Frankel, an undisputed generational talent, once suggested were likely.
