Adam Houghton speaks to Aidan O'Brien about the hugely exciting City Of Troy, who was crowned the leading two-year-old in Europe at the Timeform Awards.
It's not unusual for Aidan O’Brien to have the highest-rated juvenile in Europe in his expert care at Ballydoyle. And nor is an end-of-season rating of 125p way out of the ordinary for a leader in this division.
Since 2010, six two-year-olds have been the best of their generation with a higher rating, including two of O’Brien’s own, Air Force Blue (128p in 2015) and Little Big Bear (126p in 2022).
But then there’s so much else that is unusual about City Of Troy.
It’s certainly unusual for a two-year-old to reach a rating of 119p after just two starts – City Of Troy is the only champion juvenile since 2010 to achieve that feat.
It’s also been unusual to have a champion juvenile who made their debut during the second half of the calendar year – only three others have had that sort of profile since 2010, namely Frankel (133p in 2010), Too Darn Hot (127p in 2018) and St Mark’s Basilica (121p in 2020).
And perhaps what’s most unusual about City Of Troy is the imperious manner in which he won his three races in an unbeaten two-year-old campaign, leaving the impression we’ve barely scratched the surface of his potential.
As O’Brien himself puts it: “He’s the first horse we’ve had come along to show such class and courage, without us feeling that we’ve got to the last gear yet.”
Ballydoyle grounding and debut blitz
The fact City Of Troy didn’t make his debut until July suggests he’d perhaps been hiding his light under a bushel in his early days at Ballydoyle, gears one, two, three and four yet to be discovered, never mind the last one.
However, it turns out that City Of Troy had in fact been a standout among the class of 2023 all along, with it instead being a conscious decision from O’Brien and the team to delay the first step in his education.
“He always had lovely balance, a lovely shape and a lovely mind,” O’Brien sums up when giving his first impressions of City Of Troy. “He was a lovely size of a horse, not too big and not too small. He looked the ideal horse all the way along really.
“He was standing out in February or March, would you believe? In his work he was showing plenty – we were surprised by how much he was showing for the way he’s bred.
“The thing was just to keep him relaxed in his work. He’s a very relaxed horse, but we didn’t want to be exposing him that early. His half-speeds were always very strong, but we didn’t try to expose him and let him know how good he was.”
The first opportunity for City Of Troy – and the rest of us – to find out how good he was came on the second day of the Irish Derby meeting at the Curragh and in the seven-furlong maiden which kicked off the card.
An SP of 6/4 suggests the outcome, a dominant two-and-a-half-length victory, didn’t come as much of a surprise, but there was a scare for jockey Ryan Moore once the business of winning the race was done with.
“He just took off with Ryan when he passed the line,” O’Brien recalls. “He was just starting to open up and I think Ryan got a big shock. He galloped down to the wall and Ryan couldn’t get him to drop a gear. It’s a very unusual thing for a horse to be finishing that strong in a race.”
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Superlative performance at Newmarket
City Of Troy’s unusual way of going about things would not be forgotten in a hurry by Moore, who was keen to avoid a repeat of that scare when the colt made his next appearance in the Group 2 Superlative Stakes at Newmarket a couple of weeks later.
However, despite Moore’s best efforts, City Of Troy again seemed intent on running a good bit further than the scheduled seven furlongs of the July Course, putting up the best performance in the race’s history on Timeform ratings as he powered home to an emphatic six-and-a-half-length defeat of a subsequent Group 2 winner, Haatem.
“It was on Ryan’s mind what he did at the Curragh,” O’Brien says of the afternoon when City Of Troy announced himself as a two-year-old potentially out of the top drawer.
“I remember Ryan telling me at Newmarket that he was going to make sure the horse got tired today, because it’s not far to the end of the run out area on the July Course. He let him roll at halfway, he let him really stretch, but the same thing happened again. He passed the line and just took off.
“We knew then there was something different going on here. It [the Superlative] is a good race every year and you need a good horse to win it. The horses who were in it looked a smart bunch, so to see him win it like he did, that just showed that he definitely was different alright.”
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Discover Sporting Life Plus BenefitsO’Brien winning the Group 1 National Stakes at the Curragh is anything but unusual and he did so for a twelfth time in 2023, though it wasn’t with City Of Troy, a late absentee due to the rain-softened ground.
Instead, City Of Troy made his final appearance of the campaign in the Group 1 Dewhurst Stakes at Newmarket’s Rowley Mile in October, despite the weather again trying to disrupt the best-laid plans of his connections.
“Our Frankel” overcomes soft ground fears
“We were debating whether we were going to run him or not,” O’Brien admits. “He’d had a break after the July Festival and we’d trained him for the National Stakes when the ground came up soft.
“We just felt that he was going to improve a good bit from the run at the Curragh. We didn’t want to take a chance on running him and asking him to do too much if we didn’t have him in 100% condition for it. That’s why we didn’t run and then obviously we went to the Dewhurst where the same thing happened again.
“He was only going to have the three runs, that was the plan, and we just felt then that he was three weeks further down the road than he would have been in the National Stakes. He’d matured and he was stronger.
“He’s a beautiful mover, so soft ground definitely wouldn’t be ideal for him the way he moves. But we’d never seen him getting tired at home and we felt that if any horse was going to get through ground that wasn’t ideal it was him.”
Get through it City Of Troy did, typically taking everything in his stride as he found another chunk of improvement to make all by three and a half lengths. The best compliment you can pay him is that he made the brilliant look rather routine, justifying the belief of all those closest to him, including part-owner Michael Tabor who hailed him as “our Frankel” immediately afterwards.
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Discover Sporting Life Plus Benefits“We just felt that we hadn’t had a horse like him before,” O’Brien adds before reflecting on the Dewhurst and the feedback from Moore.
“Ryan was happy for someone to give him a lead and, if not, he was going to go on himself. He’s very straightforward and it was the same story, he just galloped through the line again and Ryan still felt that he didn’t get to the bottom of him.
“Ryan was so confident in the horse that he really felt it didn’t matter what the ground was going to be like or anything else. He didn’t think he’d ridden a horse like this before, either – he’s always felt that this horse was different.”
Plans taking shape for 2024 campaign
“I’d say he definitely is,” O’Brien agrees when it’s suggested that City Of Troy could be as talented as any of the two-year-olds he’s trained in his illustrious career, with attentions then turning to what his three-year-old campaign might have in store.
Those of us who like to let our imaginations run wild are already dreaming of tilts at the Triple Crown or a Breeders’ Cup Classic and, encouragingly, O’Brien is not in a hurry to rule anything out should City Of Troy come through his intended reappearance in the 2000 Guineas unscathed.
The trainer of the last horse to complete the 2000 Guineas/Derby double, Camelot – later runner-up in the St Leger when trying to complete the Triple Crown – O’Brien believes there is “every chance” City Of Troy would stay a mile and a half at Epsom, while there are elements of his pedigree which suggest America’s dirt tracks wouldn’t hold any fears for him, either.
“I guess what’s very different and exciting is that he’s by Justify,” O’Brien continues. “The Justifys seem to handle grass as well as dirt and it all comes alike to them.
“They all have similar profiles. They get the trips very strong, they have big strides and they can go forward in their races. For a stallion so early in his career, there is a profile starting to appear very quickly about the type of horse he produces.”
O’Brien’s Opera Singer, Timeform’s highest-rated two-year-old filly in Europe, was another member of Justify’s second crop to make a big impression in 2023, while Dubawi colt Henry Longfellow was runner-up to City Of Troy at the Timeform Awards having made the most of his stable companion’s absence when maintaining his unbeaten record in the National Stakes.
They were far from alone as O’Brien also took out Group/Grade 1 prizes with Ylang Ylang (Fillies’ Mile) and Unquestionable (Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Turf), while the likes of River Tiber (Coventry Stakes) and Diego Velazquez (Champions Juvenile Stakes) were successful in races below the top level.
It all adds up to a team with rare strength in depth among the two-year-olds and a nice problem for O’Brien to mull over as he tries to shuffle the pack in 2024, with City Of Troy and Henry Longfellow seemingly unlikely to clash on the racecourse, at least not in the first part of the season.
“I can’t say I do remember ever having that many two-year-olds so highly rated,” O’Brien sums up. “They started early and they just kept coming really.
“I’d imagine that City Of Troy and Henry Longfellow will be kept apart for as long as the lads want to do that. We’re obviously thinking that City of Troy will be trained for Newmarket and then Henry Longfellow might be trained for France.
“If everything went well with City Of Troy at Newmarket, he could go straight on to Epsom, whereas the other horse could do the Curragh and Ascot or something like that. There’s lots of scenarios that could happen I suppose.”
Lots of scenarios indeed and so much to be excited about with one of the big winners at the Timeform Awards.
City Of Troy, ladies and gentlemen, an unusual colt with the potential to become an all-time great in 2024.
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