Sod’s Law dictated how Horse Racing Ireland (HRI) brought a squad of media types to Ballydoyle to plug next week’s Irish Champions Festival only for the horse on everyone’s lips to be practically the only one that won’t be at Irish flat racing’s showpiece event of the year.
City Of Troy’s absence from Saturday week’s Royal Bahrain Irish Champion Stakes at Leopardstown was a twist of fate that hung over Monday morning’s proceedings like an ironic cloud.
Rather than lining up for the €1.25 million day-one highlight of a hugely lucrative weekend’s action at home, a few days later City Of Troy will be flown to Southwell, a Nottinghamshire outpost possessed of an all-weather surface, where he will gallop for nothing against a handful of stable companions.
The purpose is to help the Derby hero — acclaimed by Aidan O’Brien as the best he’s trained — acclimatise to racing on dirt in advance of his date with destiny in November’s Breeders Cup Classic in Del Mar.
Having confirmed his status as Europe’s highest rated performer this season with victory in last month’s Juddmonte International at York, City Of Troy’s Coolmore ownership is going all-in on finally securing an elusive success in the $7 million feature of US racing’s flagship meeting.
The logic is that the horse’s aggressive instinct to go hard from the start of his races was satisfied at York: with that under his belt he’s likely to be even more truculent on his next outing and that’s an impulse better suited to breaking from the gates in California than at Leopardstown. Plus, after 24 years of Classic failure, something different is required.
“I know him, the next day he will hit those gates. He will want to go. If he hadn’t done it in York, he could’ve ended up going to Leopardstown. But he’s after doing it now and we wouldn’t want to do it again in a big race.
“We have to be different. We went to the Breeders’ Cup Classic with Giant’s Causeway [2000] and got beat. We got beat with everything, so we have to tweak something and City Of Troy might go a shade fresher. That’s what we’re hoping,” O’Brien explained.
And as glittering as the prizes are on their own doorstep next week, Coolmore’s desire to finally unearth a European turf star versatile enough to also beat America’s best on dirt trumps local considerations.
O’Brien’s readiness to talk up City Of Troy’s “unique” levels of talent has seen him accused of commercially hyping the son of Coolmore’s new big stallion, Justify.
The carping might have stung but he remains noticeably effusive about the colt, even giving an insight into how he might want for dirt experience but not stomach for a fight. A tendency to hang right in his races is apparently down to fondness for a scrap.
“He hangs because he’s a hardy customer and he’ll maul you if you’re mauling him,” O’Brien said. “He has a lot of Justify in him and a lot of Galileo and none of those are wimps. He’s hardy. If you restricted him, he’d make you suffer. He’s very unique.”
The significance of that description is not just almost three decades of unparalleled achievement by O’Brien since taking the helm at Ballydoyle, but just the level of talent accompanying this apparent paragon up the gallops every day.
In City Of Troy’s absence, not only will the last two winners of the Champion Stakes — Auguste Rodin and Luxembourg — fly the Ballydoyle flag in the big race but also this season’s Irish Derby winner Los Angeles.
Other options such as Illinois and Jan Bruegel for next week’s Doncaster St Leger means Los Angeles will instead take in Leopardstown’s 10-furlong challenge before a potential tilt at the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe in Paris.
With White Birch ruled out for the rest of the season on Monday, and a rainy start to autumn, O’Brien’s anticipation of a probable placed effort over a shorter trip might even err on the side of caution.
If the Champion Stakes is a springboard to Paris for Los Angeles it could be a stepping stone to even further afield for last year’s winner Auguste Rodin. Recovered from a lacklustre effort in July’s King George, the 2023 Derby winner is set to close out his rollercoaster career in November’s Japan Cup.
“He loves fast ground and his last bit of work was excellent, he showed a lot of zest in it. He went by his lead horse very easy, whereas usually he wouldn’t at that stage of the work. He was very confident, and it was a bit different.
“The plan is to go to Leopardstown and then go to Japan after it. We think he’s a mile-and-a-quarter horse that gets a mile and a half, but he doesn’t want any further than that. He’s a very slick horse who travels very well and does everything very easy,” O’Brien said.
No doubt to the relief of HRI organisers, there’s no suggestion of the Champions Festival being anything but a destination for the star stayer Kyprios. He will be short odds to reclaim the Comer Group Irish St Leger on Day Two of the extravaganza at the Curragh.
Four of the six Group One prizes up for grabs at the 11th Champions Festival are at Irish racing’s HQ where Henri Matisse is likely to top Ballydoyle’s team for the National Stakes. The other top juvenile prize, the Moyglare Stud Stakes, will enable Bedtime Story to attempt to extend her unbeaten record.
Even then, Ballydoyle’s international perspective means there are other Group One priorities in Paris that day. An Arc trials programme at Longchamp is set to include star filly Opera Singer who will take her chance in the Prix Vermeille.
There are no immediate top-flight considerations at Tuesday’s Gowran programme but O’Brien’s Monumental should prove hard to beat in a juvenile maiden. He chased home Ides of March at the Curragh last month and the latter landed a Group Three on Saturday.
