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City of Troy aiming to make John Magnier's Breeders' Cup Classic dream come true
With City of Troy's next start likely to be on dirt, John Ingles looks at Ballydoyle's long-standing quest to win the Breeders' Cup Classic.
"The dream is to have a horse who can act in the US and here, but it’s hard to get that type of horse. At the moment, Justify is delivering on both sides and we’re lucky with him, which gives you some hope that City of Troy is worth trying."
Coolmore boss John Magnier was speaking to ITV after City of Troy had won last month’s Coral-Eclipse but the Breeders’ Cup Classic had been mentioned as the colt’s main target earlier, immediately after he’d won the Derby when there was even talk of City of Troy having an exclusively American dirt campaign for the remainder of the season.
Instead, City of Troy added the Juddmonte International to his Eclipse victory, but once again connections are now turning their attentions firmly towards Del Mar on November 2.
Magnier has been harbouring that dream of a Breeders’ Cup Classic for around a quarter of a century now, with Justify’s son City of Troy the latest top-class colt trained at Ballydoyle to be set the task of turning the dream into reality.
The list of Ballydoyle horses who have attempted to transfer their top-class form on European turf to American dirt is an impressive one, with City of Troy trying to do what the likes of Giant’s Causeway, Galileo, Hawk Wing, George Washington, Henrythenavigator, Duke of Marmalade, Rip Van Winkle and So You Think – all of whom had Timeform ratings of 130 or more – failed to accomplish when sent across the Atlantic.
In all, Aidan O’Brien has run 16 different horses in 14 editions of the Classic, though City of Troy will be his first runner for six years in the Breeders’ Cup’s richest race.
The dream began with Giant’s Causeway in 2000, he too the winner of both the Eclipse and Juddmonte International among a haul of five Group 1 contests at three which earned him the Iron Horse nickname well before he was sent to Churchill Downs.
Giant’s Causeway’s final preparation, incidentally, took place at Southwell which was the nearest thing in Britain or Ireland to an American dirt track. O’Brien mentioned giving City of Troy a similar gallop before his Breeders’ Cup bid, though the tapeta at Southwell these days doesn’t resemble dirt quite as much as its former fibresand surface.
Sent off second favourite under Mick Kinane, Giant’s Causeway showed all the battling qualities that had earned him the admiration of so many in Europe but it wasn’t enough to overhaul an equally determined rival in the American three-year-old Tiznow who held on by a neck as the pair pulled clear. Giant’s Causeway’s performance was at least as good as anything he had produced on turf and he set a standard which few of his stable’s subsequent challengers have come close to matching. His narrow defeat on what was his final start before retiring to stud did nothing to devalue Giant’s Causeway as a stallion. Quite the opposite, in fact, as his stud fee, set beforehand at IR 75,000 guineas, promptly went up to 100,000.
Giant’s Causeway was the first of three sons of Storm Cat from Ballydoyle to contest the Breeders’ Cup Classic and City of Troy comes from the same sire line. Storm Cat had another runner a year later, the Irish 2000 Guineas and St James’s Palace Stakes winner Black Minnaloushe, but he was very much the Ballydoyle second string to Galileo, the only one of his stable’s Derby winners to have contested the Breeders’ Cup Classic to date. They too galloped at Southwell beforehand, and while Galileo duly fared the better of the pair at Belmont it proved quite a bruising experience for Coolmore’s future super-sire as he reportedly returned with swollen eyes and sore heels in finishing sixth behind repeat winner Tiznow.
Undeterred, O’Brien and Kinane were represented a year later, at Arlington this time, by Hawk Wing who remains the highest-rated horse O’Brien has trained (Timeform 136). Hawk Wing earned that rating at four, but his three-year-old season ended on a low note at the Breeders’ Cup where he finished seventh after a slow start put him at an immediate disadvantage.
Hold That Tiger, fifth at Santa Anita in 2003, in contrast, would be one of the lower-rated horses O’Brien has run in the Breeders’ Cup Classic, though he fared better than Eclipse and Irish Champion Stakes winner Oratorio who beat only two home at Belmont two years later.
George Washington was the only Ballydoyle representative to contest two Breeders’ Cup Classics, a failed stallion career unexpectedly resulting in him getting a second but sadly ill-fated chance at the race. The 2000 Guineas and Queen Elizabeth II Stakes winner gave the impression he didn’t stay the extra couple of furlongs when sixth at Churchill Downs as a three-year-old in 2006 but on a wet track at Monmouth Park a year later he was well held when breaking down in the final furlong.
If that was the low point of Ballydoyle’s Breeders’ Cup Classic attempts, 2008 brought its best result since Giant’s Causeway’s narrow defeat. With Santa Anita briefly ditching its traditional dirt surface for a synthetic track, European horses took the first two places, with Henrythenavigator, under John Velazquez, finishing a good second to the race’s first British-trained winner Raven’s Pass. The pair were old rivals, with Henrythenavigator having won the 2000 Guineas, Irish 2000 Guineas, St James’s Palace and Sussex Stakes, though Johnny Murtagh had chosen to ride the other Ballydoyle runner, four-year-old Duke of Marmalade (only ninth) who’d completed a five-timer in Group 1s earlier in the year in the Juddmonte International.
Murtagh fared no better back at Santa Anita a year later on Rip Van Winkle, the Sussex Stakes and Queen Elizabeth II winner being the first of Galileo’s sons to contest the Breeders’ Cup Classic and another challenger who failed to perform on his first try away from turf.
Two years later, Ryan Moore had his first ride in the Breeders’ Cup Classic for O’Brien on the tough and consistent ex-Australian horse So You Think, winner of the Tattersalls Gold Cup, Eclipse and Irish Champion Stakes that season. With blinkers fitted for the first time since joining Ballydoyle, he didn’t run badly on his dirt debut, beaten just over three lengths into sixth behind Drosselmeyer.
Another recruit from abroad to Ballydoyle in a similar mould was ex-French colt Declaration of War, and while he wasn’t among the very best from his stable to contest the Breeders’ Cup Classic, he went very close at Santa Anita in 2013 in one of the race’s weaker renewals. Ridden by Joseph O’Brien, as he had been when successful in the Queen Anne Stakes and Juddmonte International, Declaration of War travelled well behind the pace and stayed on to be beaten just a nose and a head behind Mucho Macho Man and Will Take Charge.
Two of Ballydoyle’s more recent Breeders’ Cup Classic challengers were Galileo’s 2000 Guineas winners Gleneagles, a tailed-off last at Keeneland in 2015, and Churchill, well held (along with stablemate War Decree) at Del Mar in 2017.
Perhaps their efforts prompted a rethink about the type of colt needed for the race because the stable’s most recent challenger, Mendelssohn in 2018, had a different profile from all the Breeders’ Cup Classic runners from Ballydoyle who had preceded him. While the American-bred son of Scat Daddy had won the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Turf at Del Mar the year before, he had a dirt campaign at three after a successful reappearance on Dundalk’s polytrack. After running away with the UAE Derby, things went wrong for Mendelssohn from an early stage in the Kentucky Derby but he did all his racing subsequently in the States and ran up to his best, after setting a strong pace for a long way, when fourth lengths fifth behind Accelerate in the Breeders’ Cup Classic at Churchill Downs.
As well as Mendelssohn, Scat Daddy is also the sire of City of Troy’s sire Justify, winner of the same Kentucky Derby which Mendelssohn contested, before going on to complete the US Triple Crown. Retired before he could contest the Breeders’ Cup Classic, Coolmore’s subsequent purchase of breeding rights to Justify valued him in the region of $60m to $75m.
As Magnier pointed out, Justify is indeed "delivering on both sides". Not just on both sides of the Atlantic but also on both dirt and turf. There was a good demonstration of that versatility on both surfaces at last year’s Breeders’ Cup at Santa Anita where a couple of his daughters won the Juvenile Fillies and the Juvenile Fillies Turf. That makes City of Troy’s Classic bid much less of a shot in the dark than Galileo’s was.
"Different" and "unique" are two of the words O’Brien has used when talking about City of Troy. If he did become the first Derby winner to land the Breeders’ Cup Classic it would be hard to argue otherwise.
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