Before international football teams captured national pride, racehorses were the symbols of national aspirations. Gladiateur, the first French-bred winner of the Derby at Epsom in 1865, was famously called “the avenger of Waterloo”. Even today, some traditions persist. At 14.41 Pacific Time on Saturday, 21.41 GMT in London and Dublin, and 05.41 Japan Standard Time on Sunday morning in Tokyo, the eyes of tens of millions of racing enthusiasts worldwide will be on Del Mar in southern California for a two-minute horse race. This race features City Of Troy, this year’s Derby winner, and 13 other contenders in the Breeders’ Cup Classic. It’s a race of champions from three continents, and for City Of Troy, it’s as tough an away fixture as it gets.
City Of Troy is attempting an unprecedented feat: no Derby winner on turf has ever won the Classic on dirt. He is the only runner in the field with no prior experience on the dirt surface. The intense pace, the kickback, and the gate speed of his rivals will present a relentless test from the start. There will be no easing into the contest, no mid-race lull to catch his breath. All of City Of Troy’s opponents are seasoned on dirt, including Forever Young, Japan’s big hope, who was just two noses away from becoming the country’s first Kentucky Derby winner in May. Fierceness, the leading US-trained contender, is a multiple Grade One winner and finished six lengths ahead in last year’s Breeders’ Cup Juvenile, the championship race for dirt-bred two-year-olds.
There is no exact parallel in sports for the challenge City Of Troy faces on Saturday. Tennis players move from hard courts to clay or grass, but they know what to expect and never face a win-or-bust contest on an entirely unfamiliar surface. They can also plan ahead, seeing when a change is coming and preparing accordingly, both physically and mentally. In City Of Troy’s case, his trainer, Aidan O’Brien, must do the thinking for him. “It’s a completely different game, a different continent, different surface, different pace of the race, different stalls,” O’Brien said at the track on Thursday. “It has to be a big disadvantage to a horse, but all we can do is hope that he’s good enough to overcome all these things.”
O’Brien has done everything possible to prepare City Of Troy for his first and last race on dirt this weekend, but even then, he cannot be certain that City Of Troy will not shy away from the Classic challenge, just as Galileo did back in 2004. “He [City Of Troy] was always an aggressive horse from the gate and a high cruiser,” the trainer said. “There’s a lot of Justify in him, and there’s a lot of Galileo in him. I suppose the Galileo helps him to be as good on the grass as he is, and hopefully the Justify will help him to cope with the change.”
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