City of Troy justifying the hype

Once he’d been through the roll-call of all those at Ballydoyle – and it really did seem like all of them - who’d played their part in City of Troy becoming his tenth Derby winner, Aidan O’Brien was keen to give some more credit elsewhere, this time to the colt’s sire.

‘For us, Justify is the most incredible horse we have had. The great stallion we had was Galileo. Justifys are Galileos with more class, which is a very hard thing to say, but we see it every day. The stride, the minds, the movement of them, they are quicker than Galileos, which makes them unbelievably exciting for us.’

Galileos with more class? That wasn’t exactly something O’Brien’s first Derby winner was lacking as a stallion seeing as he sired a record five Derby winners of his own (four of those also trained by O’Brien) and is grandsire of three more. Galileo is also the sire of City of Troy’s dam Together Forever, a Fillies’ Mile winner just like Rhododendron, another daughter of Galileo and the dam of last year’s Derby winner Auguste Rodin.

Justify, winner of the US triple crown, is a Coolmore stallion standing at their Kentucky base, Ashford Stud, so O’Brien isn’t exactly unbiased in his opinion, but he's also better placed than any other trainer in Europe to assess the qualities of his offspring. In any case, Justify’s early success – City of Troy comes from just his second crop of three-year-olds – means that he hardly needs anyone drumming up custom on his behalf. Coolmore initially doubled his fee to $200,000 last autumn ahead of the 2024 covering season but that soon became ‘private’ once two of Justify’s two-year-old fillies won at the Breeders’ Cup. And whatever fee Justify had really been standing at before 4.30 pm on Saturday afternoon, it seems a safe bet that he’ll be more expensive still next season.

In the immediate aftermath of the Derby, O’Brien actually seemed more excited about Justify than what his son had just achieved, and while the trainer has often spoken in glowing terms about his individual big-race winners in the past, the fact that this time O’Brien talked so enthusiastically about Justify’s offspring in general implies that in due course there will be plenty more where City of Troy came from. It’s not the first time, either, that O’Brien has predicted great things from Justify. ‘I think it’ll be unbelievable what his progeny are going to do’ claimed O’Brien in a Racing Post interview earlier this year. ‘I don’t think we’ve seen anything like what’s going to happen yet.’

If O’Brien expected something to ‘happen’ in the 2000 Guineas, he was to be disappointed, though Justify’s French-trained daughter Ramatuelle, showing plenty of the speed O’Brien talked about, very nearly held on to win the 1000 Guineas. But after the Derby, O’Brien’s faith in City of Troy’s sire is looking much more, well, justified.

City of Troy was notable for being the first Derby winner with a USA suffix since Kris Kin was successful for Sir Michael Stoute 21 years earlier. US-bred Derby winners may be rare creatures nowadays but were much more common in the last three decades or so of the twentieth century.

Coolmore have been able to rely on the likes of Galileo and another Irish-based son of Sadler’s Wells, Montjeu (sire of four Derby winners), for much of their Derby success this century. But more recently, they’ve needed to cast their net beyond Ireland to find suitable mates from other sire-lines for their mares which is how Japan’s Deep Impact and now America’s Justify have come to sire the last two Derby winners.

The wheel has turned full circle because in the days of Vincent O’Brien, Ballydoyle had been home to several Derby winners who’d been bred in North America; Sir Ivor, triple crown winner Nijinsky, Roberto, The Minstrel and Nijinsky’s son Golden Fleece. Of those, Nijinsky and The Minstrel were by Kentucky Derby winner Northern Dancer, also sire of two top three-year-olds at Ballydoyle in 1984. While Sadler’s Wells was runner-up in the Prix du Jockey Club, El Gran Senor was touched off in the Derby by another son of Northern Dancer, Secreto, trained by Vincent O’Brien’s son David.

O'Brien's 1968 Derby winner Sir Ivor, foaled in Kentucky, ended his career back across the Atlantic with victory in the Washington D. C. International which, in the era before the creation of the Breeders’ Cup, was a rare opportunity for top horses from different continents to meet. Sir Ivor had been the first Derby winner to race in the United States for nearly half a century but Derby winners can be expected to do more travelling these days, and Auguste Rodin emulated another Aidan O’Brien-trained Derby winner High Chaparral when successful in last year’s Breeders’ Cup Turf.

But the challenge now awaiting City of Troy in the States is somewhat different to those Sir Ivor, High Chaparral and Auguste Rodin faced. He’s due to switch to dirt for the Travers Stakes at Saratoga in August, with the Breeders’ Cup Classic a longer-term aim, all being well.

Despite numerous attempts since, O’Brien went closest to landing the Breeders’ Cup Classic with his very first runner in the race, Giant’s Causeway, who went down by a neck to Tiznow at Churchill Downs in 2000. A year later, Galileo – O’Brien’s only Derby winner to date to contest the Classic – finished only sixth at Belmont, while Ballydoyle’s most recent challenger, the dirt-bred Mendelssohn (by Justify’s sire Scat Daddy), was fifth at Churchill Downs in 2018. The ‘turf side’ of City of Troy’s pedigree has served him well so far, but now it will be a case of trying to follow in the footsteps of his sire who had an unbeaten six-race career on dirt. If O’Brien is right about Justify, City of Troy could prove his stable’s best equipped challenger so far.

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