Flat season review: David Ord's verdict on the 2024 campaign

We never quite had lift-off, which is why City Of Troy’s bid for Breeders’ Cup Classic glory got the cut-through it did. It was the big story from mid-summer onwards.

I don’t believe there are swathes of racing fans on either side of the Irish Sea pacing up and down their living rooms waiting for the day one of ours conquers the dirt and wins the biggest prize of all at the self-proclaimed World Thoroughbred Championships.

But City Of Troy gave us hope – and a couple of bright spots through the summer.

Firstly, his Betfred Derby triumph after an Auguste Rodin-esque 2000 Guineas blowout, and then what turns out to have been a career-defining relentless home straight drive to see off Calandagan and co from the front in the Juddmonte International.

Aidan O’Brien insists he’s the best he’s ever trained – but Timeform have him eight pounds shy of Hawk Wing and just joint-20th in that particular Hall of Fame.

Maybe he could have soared higher had he been pushed harder. The list of Group One winners he beat in his entire career reads: Los Angeles, Al Riffa, Bluestocking and the Japanese St Leger hero Durezza.

But he was the story – and star – of 2024.

Oaks winner Ezeliya never ran again after Epsom, shock 1000 Guineas heroine Elmalka didn't win another race and while Notable Speech did add the Sussex Stakes to his 2000 Guineas triumph, he was beaten in three other starts.

Rosallion and Haatem didn't race after Royal Ascot to leave the Classic generation weak in a mile division from which Charyn emerged the overall dominant force.

When he won the Doncaster Mile in the Town Moor mud in March and the bet365 Mile at Sandown a month later it looked like a good piece of placing by Roger Varian. But the colt had only just started.

Beaten by Audience in a remarkable Lockinge, he rolled on to win the Queen Anne, Prix Jacques Le Marois and Queen Elizabeth II Stakes, with defeat in another bizarrely-run race, the Moulin, the only other bump in the road.

He was a timely tonic for his trainer who suffered the high-profile departure of the Amo Racing horses in the spring before Sheikh Mohammed Obaid produced his own well-worn expulsion tool to remove his horses from Carlburg Stables mid-summer.

But on Champions Day, Varian was able to smile and welcome Charyn to the winners’ enclosure. They don’t play music to welcome horses back in Berkshire as they do at York, but I’m Still Standing would have been a very fitting one for that moment. Even more so on Saturday morning when news broke that he's joined the Godolphin roster with four blue blooded yearlings heading his way.

If Charyn was the best miler then Kyprios ruled supreme among the stayers, back to his brilliant best after suffering a life-threatening illness which truncated his 2023 campaign.

Unbeaten in seven races from April to October, four of which were at the highest level, from the mile-and-six of the Irish St Leger to two-and-a-quarter miles in the Ascot Gold Cup and Prix du Cadran, he was untouchable.

He danced every dance and is just the sort of horse that resonates with the public. He’ll be back in 2025 too, an indictment really of how the best stayers are received by the breeding industry, and very hard to beat again.

Ironically, the two biggest threats to his crown are probably near-neighbours Jan Brueghel and Illinois, first and second in the Betfred St Leger.

The picture among the middle-distance horses, City Of Troy apart, was a little less clear.

Auguste Rodin hung around for another season but won just one of his five starts, the Prince Of Wales’s Stakes at Royal Ascot. He has one final dart to throw in the Japan Cup, but overall it’s been an even patchier campaign than his three-year-old one. It was a bold move for connections to go around again with him and probably deserved better.

White Birch, who beat him in the Tattersalls Gold Cup, never raced again. Neither did Passenger after his Huxley win at Chester. King Of Steel didn't see the racecourse at all, Isle Of Jura won the Hardwicke and was sidelined soon after.

Arabian Crown played an early winning hand in the Sandown Classic Track but never raced subsequently and I don’t know what price you’d have been quoted had you tried to back the combined the trio of star mares Emily Upjohn, Inspiral and Nashwa not to win a single race between them all year, but go and collect if you did.

Economics burned bright in the Dante and got the job done in the Irish Champion, but his ascent was brought to a shuddering halt when he returned with a bloody nose – and not just figuratively – after defeat in the Champion Stakes at Ascot.

Goliath roared to victory in the King George in July and looks a top-notcher for Francis-Henri Graffard and his team in France, a fact underlined by his comeback win in the Prix du Conseil de Paris last month.

But he’s a gelding – like Calandagan who must also take high rank in 2025 – and wasn’t eligible to run in the Arc.

That left the door open and Bluestocking swept through to win the autumn showpiece and cap a remarkable year for herself, Ralph Beckett and Rossa Ryan.

She was on the go from May when she won the Middleton, beat Emily Upjohn in the Pretty Polly at the Curragh, and won the Vermeille before her Arc success.

Her only two defeats came when second to Goliath at Ascot and fourth behind City Of Troy at York. She came, she saw and while she didn’t always conquer, she gave it her best.

For Beckett and Ryan, there’s real momentum. You’d imagine the Kimpton Downs handler would have been high on the list when the major operations allocated their yearlings this autumn.

When things are going your way horses like Starlust produce the performance of their career in a race like the Breeders’ Cup Turf Sprint, and on a day when the field parts like the Red Sea did for Moses down the short home stretch.

The sprinters in general were much of a muchness although Bradsell and Believing’s rivalry was a good – if ultimately one-sided. Over six furlongs Khaadem, Inisherin, Mill Stream and Kind Of Blue all had days in the sun, but far more afternoons in the shadows.

We said farewell to Sir Michael Stoute, or at least we think we did, at a murky Nottingham on Wednesday afternoon. Now there was a training career.

Stoute never trained for Amo Racing but their spending spree at Tattersalls, alongside firebrand Nottingham Forest chairman Evangelos Marinakis, was the talk of the sales season.

Sir Mark Prescott has taken charge of the 2.5million guineas full-sister to Alpinista, who I presume won’t have three quick runs over five furlongs on the all-weather next winter, and the progress of Kia Joorabchian's expensively assembled artillery for 2025 will be one of the main talking points through the next campaign.

So there are new kids on the block but as we head into winter quarters familiar names seem to hold the ace cards for the early Classics.

Lake Victoria against Desert Flower promises to be a good old-fashioned Ballydoyle vs Godolphin smash-up in the 1000 (Aidan has about five who could step in if needed), while O'Brien also supplies the 2000 market leader in The Lion In Winter.

He hasn’t been seen since winning the Acomb at York and it’s 6/1 the field with Appleby’s Shadow Of Light prominent in the betting after completing the Middle Park–Dewhurst double.

The hype has yet to start around any horse, no bold claims of Triple Crown glory at this stage. If 2024 taught us anything it’s to savour the very good days whenever they come along, and the horses who try to provide them on a regular basis.

All hail Kyprios, Charyn, Bluestocking and City Of Troy. But in 2025 a few more heavyweight slugfests along the way would do much to raise morale and the profile of the sport.

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