City Of Troy - Horse Profile & Next Race Odds

Aidan O'Brien (28 October 2024): "Everything has gone really well in his preparation for the Breeders’ Cup Classic. We have set tough markers for him since his day out at Southwell and he’s hit every one of them. This race is probably one of the most gruelling Flat races anywhere, so the preparation has to be appropriate to get them ready for an examination like that. Not every horse would be able to stand up to it, but he very much has. The big unknown is the dirt surface and like everyone else we won’t know until we see it, but we have lots of reasons to be hopeful. He has the most beautiful action that some might say isn’t a typical dirt action, but if you look back at Giant’s Causeway, he also had a long, low action and had no issues with the dirt. Whatever happens on Saturday, he’s been the most incredible horse. To win Group 1s from seven furlongs in the Dewhurst up to a mile-and-a-half in the Derby, making the running, dropped in, right-handed, left-handed, straight tracks, soft ground, fast ground, flat tracks, very undulating tracks and everything in between, it’s very, very unusual at the very highest level. What he did on the clock in the Juddmonte International was incredible and to do it while making his own running made it all the more impressive and unusual. Plenty of people might like to judge horses by ratings to rank them and they are obviously fully entitled to do that, but there is so much more to it than that when assessing a horse. Ratings don’t capture a lot of things that can make a horse great. If you go down through that list of the highest-rated horses that have come through Ballydoyle in our time, you just won’t find one that has done the things he has done on the track in terms of a body of work as a two-year-old and three-year-old. We are asking one last huge question of him on Saturday, but we couldn’t have any more belief in him. He’s a phenomenal racehorse. "

Aidan O'Brien (19 March 2024): "Everything is going really well with him, and the plan is to go straight to Newmarket for the 2000 Guineas. We are particularly happy with how well he has wintered. He’s working away on bad ground at the minute as they all are obliged to. He seems to handle it and handled a good cut in the ground in the Dewhurst, but as anyone can see he is a particularly beautiful mover which is what makes it so exciting to see what he does when he meets firmer ground. The better the ground, he better he’ll be. He’ll go away for a gallop in the next week or 10 days that is always an important step for the Guineas horses. It was great for him to get the experience of the undulations of both the July Course and the Rowley Mile at Newmarket last season. That will all stand to him in the 2000 Guineas. We’ll play it race-by-race, but you’d have to be made of stone not to be dreaming of the Derby if all goes to plan at Newmarket. After that, he could even go to somewhere like Saratoga for a Grade 1 on the dirt. He’s that type, he could do anything, but we’ll take it one race at a time. We have an unbelievable group of three-year-olds this year, but he has always been the leader. Horses like him are very rare."