Marten Julian’s Weekly Roundup 23 September 2024

I have never considered myself a great judge of work.

Over the years I have seen dozens of home gallops, but horses are seldom given too hard a time in their work and you don’t always know how much weight the horses are carrying.

Also not every horse reveals its true ability in work at home.

There have been occasions when a horse has excelled in a piece of work … the Nashwan gallop has become the stuff of legend, while Frankel apparently left a very useful work companion miles behind on the first occasion he was seriously tried.

It is in the light of these comments that I have to say I did not see anything that special in City Of Troy’s public gallop at Southwell last Friday. Apparently he does things at home that have marked him down as exceptional … probably on the clock … but on Friday he was no more than workmanlike, against horses rated on 84, 88, 89 and 91.

City Of Troy is rated on 124, so over a mile you would have expected him to finish about 16 lengths in front, based on 2lbs a length.

Now there are plenty of factors to take into consideration. I don’t know how much weight the horses carried. Second, City Of Troy is a horse who tends to lengthen his stride and gallop away rather than quicken with an instant turn of foot. Third, Ryan Moore wasn’t all out on the horse by any means.

Aidan O’Brien has said many times that the colt has exceptional resources to call upon and that he has never got tired, so Friday’s exercise was never going to fully exhibit those qualities.

Of some concern is that he was the slowest away from the stalls … that would leave him at a big disadvantage at Del Mar … but he had been quickly into his stride at York.

To his credit there was no sign of him hanging right, as he had in the Derby, Coral-Eclipse and Juddmonte. Mind you that trait may return in the hustle and bustle of a race.

O’Brien has not won the Breeders’ Cup Classic despite aiming horses of the calibre of Galileo, Hawk Wing, Giant’s Causeway, Gleneagles, Churchill, George Washington and So You Think at the race. Declaration of War went very close – beaten a nose and a head in 2013.

City Of Troy is, of course, bred for the dirt given that his sire Justify, winner of the American Triple Crown, did all his racing on the surface and that may give him the edge over his illustrious predecessors.

Of one thing we can be sure. This is a race they really want to win and they are taking every conceivable measure to try and make it happen.

Bye for now

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