There was a space next to me for Aidan O’Brien to slide into as we had a late lunch on Saturday, delayed by the excitements we’d just seen on the track, writes Tony Stafford. To my observation that I’d written that City Of Troy was the best two-year-old I’d ever seen, performance-wise, after the Superlative Stakes back in July, Aidan simply said: “He is”, adding, “I know you did, I read that in your column again last week”.

Ever generous with his comments, I’m sure ITV viewers would have heard the same sentiment a little earlier, but like many other people I was at the time too carried up in the euphoria of seeing a performance so rare in a championship race. Even some of the great horses have made hard work of winning the Dewhurst Stakes on their way to 2000 Guineas or Derby triumph the following year.

Frankel comes immediately to mind as one that didn’t struggle, having comfortably beaten O’Brien’s Roderic O’Connor (Irish 2000 Guineas winner the following May) in his Dewhurst on his fourth start of a 14-race unbeaten career. Two other Group 1 winners were his victims in his first three two-year-old appearances.

Nathaniel (two King Georges) gave him a tussle on debut on Newmarket’s July Course while O’Brien’s Treasure Beach (Irish Derby) was only third when they met in the Royal Lodge immediately before the Dewhurst. These were notable early scalps for the colt that brought such lustre to the end of Sir Henry Cecil’s epic career, and to Prince Khalid Abdullah’s Juddmonte Farms.

That Frankel is the yardstick to which City Of Troy has aspiration to be measured was immediately and inevitably emphasised as Michael Tabor and Derrick Smith called Saturday’s winner “our Frankel”. If Aidan and Ryan Moore are to be believed, he is.

They waited for Ryan to report back after finishing second in the opener behind one of two smart Charlie Appleby winning juveniles on the day before taking the final fateful step to run. Ryan said, confounding the relatively quick time, which he explained was due to the strong following wind, that the ground was deep and holding.

A quick consultation between trainer and Messrs Tabor and Smith resulted in the decision to let him take his chance. As Michael said: “He can only lose”, a throwback to the 2000 Guineas debacle for subsequent dual Derby and Irish Champion Stakes winner Auguste Rodin. It isn’t the races you lose that count, but those you win. Now they know he can handle deep ground.

Of course, I wasn’t by any means the only media observer of the July humbling of subsequent Vintage Stakes winner Haatem to express extravagant comments. On Racing TV, Nick Luck’s first words as Ryan pulled up the son of US Triple Crown winner and Coolmore stallion Justify were: “Find me a better two-year-old and I don’t think you will. Not this year anyway.”

On his programme on the channel yesterday morning, he had Hughie Morrison, Racing Post’s Lee Mottershead, and recently retired jockey Louis Steward, and all three agreed with the presenter that here was a horse out of the ordinary.

Luck confessed that as the year went on and various other options rather than the conventional UK Classic format were being mentioned, with the Middle Park and Kentucky Derby as tentative plans, and I quote, “I cashed in my Guineas and Derby bets”. Silly Nick!

Back to Aidan, and when you think that he and the Coolmore partners have won a joint-record eight Dewhurst Stakes, six of them since 2013, for him to consider City Of Troy unquestionably the best, that is some recommendation indeed.

As we munched away, he explained, “We’ve never been able to get him tired and that hasn’t ever been the case with any of our horses before him”. To go back and watch the last furlong of his three runs – on debut at the Curragh challenged in the form the furlong pole but pushed out before going away for a comfortable victory; on the July Course exploding clear of decent opposition; and now, when asked, again surging away going up to the line, without ever seeing a hint of interruption in his perfect stride pattern in any of them.

Sectional times by furlong for the Dewhurst Stakes field, the winner accelerating impressively away on soft ground

It’s one thing to do it on fast summer going, quite another to replicate it on deep ground, but as he sailed along happily in front, initially at a steady gallop and then one marginally increased by Ryan before a quickening between the penultimate and final furlongs, the gulf in class was starkly evident.

As with Frankel in his 2000 Guineas, when the fringe performers were catching him to a minor degree at the line after the verdict was long decided, so it was on Saturday. Willie Ryan, a Derby winning jockey in his younger days and long-time observer of all the greats with a close up of Frankel’s career and more recently all the best Godolphin horses in Charlie Appleby’s yard, was adamant. “I know the Rowley Mile is a great front-runner’s track, so Ryan was right to dictate, but to do it like that in any championship race, and especially the Dewhurst, was very special.”

Justify may have won the 2018 Triple Crown in the US, as had another Coolmore America stallion, American Pharoah, two years earlier, but the equivalent feat has yet to have been achieved here since Nijinsky and Vincent O’Brien from the same yard in 1970. Camelot went close for the team in 2012, winning the 2000 Guineas and Derby before finishing runner-up in the St Leger, but if ever a pedigree suggested they can finally end the long wait for another, City Of Troy surely has it.

Galileo’s final crop of two-year-olds this year signals an imminent end of a golden era for Coolmore and the partners’ trainer, but he leaves Frankel as his top successor. Inevitably, Galileo appears prominently in City Of Troy’s pedigree and increasingly we will see the Justify on Galileo mares cross as it becomes obvious how effective it is, with so many high-class racemares the great champion has bequeathed the operation. Like his ill-fated but still highly influential sire Scat Daddy before him, Justify, who was bred by John Gunther, produces top-class turf horses.

With eight three-year-olds and a dozen juveniles to represent him in 2023 from Ballydoyle, the results have been spectacular already. City Of Troy’s exploits against the boys have been almost mirrored by Opera Singer, five-length winner of the Group 1 Prix Marcel Boussac at the Arc meeting two weekends ago. She is by Justify out of a mare by Sadler’s Wells, of course the sire of Galileo.

City Of Troy’s dam, Together Forever, had already produced four classy winners before City Of Troy. She is by Galileo and if that wasn’t evidence enough, her mother was by Theatrical, another noted stamina influence.

The year of 2024 promises to be tremendously exciting with potential dreams of the first Triple Crown for 54 years. Whereas Frankel did not get the opportunity to show that he would have been just as superior to all-comers at a mile and a half – the ten furlongs and 56 yards of the fast York track in an easy demolition of his Juddmonte International Stakes rivals on penultimate start was the furthest he attempted - I’m sure City Of Troy will tackle that longer trip. Hopefully that will happen at Epsom on the first Saturday of June.

As media director Richard Henry observed to fellow Coolmore executive Christy Grassick as they walked towards the winner’s circle straight after witnessing the sublime performance of their stable star, “Now we know what we’ll be thinking about through the winter”. Clearly, he cannot wait for the first Saturday in May.

Neither can I!

- TS