sport news City Of Troy seeks to live up to the hype and comparisons with wonder horse ... trends now
Fans watch hundreds of races every year, tens of thousands over a lifetime, but only a few performances are etched into the memory.
Maybe it is because of an emotional attachment to a winner. More likely a few precious seconds get frozen in time because they were something extraordinary.
That is what the spectators heading to Newmarket hope to witness with City Of Troy in the Qipco 2,000 Guineas.
All the Aidan O’Brien-trained odds-on favourite has to do is win, even if it is just by a nose. But, let us be honest, deep down what is needed is a statement victory — one which will stand comparison with Frankel’s six-length success in 2012 or Tudor Minstrel’s record eight-length win in 1947.
The hype surrounding Ryan Moore’s mount demands such a performance.
The pressure will be on favourite City of Troy in the 2,000 Guineas at Newmarket on Saturday
In decisively winning his three races as a two-year-old, City Of Troy was acclaimed by O’Brien as the most exciting two-year-old he had ever trained.
The man with a record 10 2,000 Guineas winners can be fairly liberal when spraying around the superlatives to describe his horses, but City Of Troy backed up the opinions with performances.
When international handicappers published their figure assessing the 2023 two-year-olds, City Of Troy was given a rating of 125, only 1lb behind that achieved by the great Frankel after his debut season.
After City Of Troy had beaten opponent Alyanaabi by three and a half lengths in the Dewhurst Stakes with two other of Saturday's rivals — Haatem (fifth) and Iberian (sixth) — behind him, part-owner Michael Tabor said: ‘He really is our Frankel. No question he is the real deal.’
O’Brien spoke of City Of Troy as a horse that had not yet been extended, adding: ‘I have never had anything like him. I’ve never had a horse that never gets tired. We usually push them to the limit but we don’t know his limit.’
After a drama-free winter and smooth preparation, that confidence remains solidly intact. It seems significant that
