sport news HORSE POWER: City Of Troy's mega-flop in the 2000 Guineas keeps us aching for ... trends now
It was the groans and the gasps that got you. Just 52 seconds into the most eagerly awaited 2,000 Guineas in a decade, the anxious change in Ryan Moore’s body language and the increased pitch of the racecourse commentator’s call made clear that the history books would remain closed.
City Of Troy was not going to bound down Newmarket’s Rowley Mile and those instinctive reactions of everyone present showed, once again, why there is no place quite like a sporting arena — whether it is a course, an arena or a stadium — for capturing emotion in its purest form.
Perhaps City Of Troy will redeem his reputation in the coming months, as his older stablemate Auguste Rodin did last summer. Nobody connected to the colt envisaged a situation on Saturday like the calamity that unfolded and his trainer, jockey and owners don’t tend to make wrong calls.
We will know on June 1 whether their faith is well placed. Aidan O’Brien won’t divert from his plan to run him in the Derby and regards him as his No 1 horse for Epsom; trials at Chester, Lingfield, York and Leopardstown loom but City Of Troy is viewed differently in Ballydoyle.
O’Brien is infectious when he gets excited about a horse. His words can sweep you along like the tune played by the Pied Piper, and everyone at Newmarket was invested in the story that we were about to see a wonder horse. It explained why the reaction to his flop was so profound.
City Of Troy will still run in the Derby despite his setback in the 2000 Guineas at Newmarket
But herein lay a lesson. There is an aching among racing fans for an all-conquering superstar to emerge, one that wins all the greatest races and does so with commanding panache. These horses, however, explode like meteors, their careers and programmes constantly evolving.
This takes us back to Sea The Stars and that golden summer of 2009. Plenty of talk has been made about City Of Troy emulating Frankel but what about moving into the realms of the colt who had swaggered around the year before the late, great Sir Henry Cecil’s masterpiece emerged? No grand pronouncements had been made about Sea The Stars before he arrived at Newmarket to contest the 2,000 Guineas. It was simply noted that he had been an excellent juvenile, was trained by a master in John Oxx and would be ridden in the Classic by the peerless Mick Kinane.
What followed after Kinane brought the colt with a withering run down the outside of the field could not have been scripted or preordained. Sea The Stars went to Epsom and defied doubts about his ability to last the mile-and-a-half trip in the most remarkable style.
Watch that race back and you will see a troop of O’Brien runners, scampering forlornly, as Kinane — who was heading into retirement at the end of the campaign — sent him remorselessly clear. He was the best Derby winner of the modern era, an absolute giant.
Had it not
