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“If you played it safe all the time, life would get very boring.” That was the somewhat rueful verdict of Aidan O’Brien after City Of Troy had finished only eighth in the Breeders’ Cup Classic on Saturday without ever looking competitive.
And so O’Brien’s 18th attempt to win the one race which consistently eludes him bit the dirt – quite literally. Even Frankie Dettori, at the end of his third winless Breeders’ Cup when it has been staged at Del Mar, said after his last ride that he had “ingested enough grit to last a lifetime”.
If the Derby-winning colt brought home anything, it was the brutal reality of chucking a brilliant turf horse in at the deep end for his first start on this alien surface; imagine stripping off for the shower and walking into a sand blaster. That is what City Of Troy faced from the get-go and you can, in photographs, almost see him wincing.
Was it predictable? Well, with hindsight, a lot of people will say yes and US racing aficionados will say “We told you so”, but there were a lot of people wiser than me who were also for him before the race.
But in reality, as so often with a European runner having their first start on dirt, however much practice you give them beforehand, as soon as the bell goes the US horses have gone two lengths before their European rivals realise the gates have opened. Then it is “have a bit of that” and a gritty dirt pie of sharp sand hits them in the eye. It is like a boxer being chucked in a cage fight expecting Queensberry Rules to be observed.
However, you should not see this as a failure. His mere presence in the race added an element of intrigue and hype to the 41st Breeders’ Cup that I have not witnessed at the meeting since home favourite Zenyatta, hitherto unbeaten, finished second in the Classic at Churchill Downs in 2010 on her 20th and final start. Racing in Britain and America needs more of that.
In O’Brien’s eyes, despite having bombed out in his shot at greater glory, City Of Troy remains the best horse he has trained. The cynical view would be: until the next one. He is probably a better-than-average Derby winner but few horses’ ears will ever have burned as much in the build-up to a race.
It is hard to feel sorry for owners Coolmore. They had two top-level winners on Friday at Del Mar, one in Australia on Saturday and, irony of ironies, actually won the Classic with Sierra Leone, trained in America by pugnacious New Yorker Chad Brown.
Ralph Beckett’s outstanding year and burgeoning partnership with jockey Rossa Ryan continued from Arc success in Paris to Del Mar when Starlust won the Turf Sprint, while Charlie Appleby kept up his terrific record at the meeting when Rebel’s Romance repeated his 2022 victory in the Turf.
As a surface, turf in America is becoming more popular again because it is consistently a safer surface than dirt. At a lot of tracks, it is a 50:50 split of races now. However, US horses were all but wiped out by the Europeans in those contests. Canada won another (Moira) in the Filly and Mare and the only home-trained turf winner was More Than Looks in the Mile.
Dan Blacker, the British trainer based in Santa Anita for 12 years, saddled Straight No Chaser to win the Sprint for MyRacehorse. Given that the five-year-old’s ownership group consists of 900 members, he was by far the most popular winner of the day.
This will not be the last we see of O’Brien in the Classic. One day he will find the right horse, it is just that this time City Of Troy was the wrong one.