By James Toney

Tipperary prides itself on being a storied place of myth, legend, and lore, but it could also be the inspiration behind one of racing’s greatest tales.

Aidan O’Brien is not known for his superlatives but insists City of Troy remains the best horse he’s ever trained at his Ballydoyle base near Rosegreen – some boast when you consider nearly thirty years of dominance in racing’s biggest prizes.

Six wins from seven runs, including a brilliant victory in the Epsom Derby that defied all training logic, are the baseline stats, but this is a story more about bloodlines than form lines.

His ancestry includes fabled names of racing like Secretariat, War Admiral, and Nijinsky, the last horse to win the English Triple Crown 54 years ago. His father is US Triple Crown winner Justify, and his grandfather is the brilliant Galileo, the sire of sires whose progeny have scored more big-race success than any other.

It’s a family tree of racing immortals, and it’s never easy to step out of the shadows of famous relatives. But City of Troy could, in the days ahead, be on a plinth of his own in the pantheon of legends.

On the green, green grass of Europe, putting aside his run in the 2000 Guineas at Newmarket, he’s without rival, but next weekend he’ll strike out for glory in the world’s greatest dirt race, the $7 million Breeders’ Cup Classic in California.

America’s premier weight-for-age race has long been O’Brien’s ambition, another tick on his sport’s greatest to-do list. He has gone for glory with 14 stable stars this century, but the closest he’s come was Henrythenavigator’s second in 2008.

The difference between racing on turf and dirt is significant – it’s not quite a different sport, but nearly. The closest sporting analogy would be winning the Monaco Grand Prix one week and the Indy 500 the next. An American colleague goes even further: “It’s like playing cricket on Wednesday and pitching in the World Series 48 hours later.”

The simple logic is that early speed is vital on dirt tracks, the opposite of how turf races are run, another reason why it’s not easy to crack America.

“I don’t know how to compare it to any other sport, it’s like he’s going into the ring for a fight he’s never, ever experienced. It’s a lot of unknowns,” said O’Brien.

“There are a lot of variables that we won’t be able to control. You’re nearly going out of a different sport into a tougher, more extreme sport than what you’ve already been racing in.

“He’s going up against older horses, he’s on a totally different continent, a totally different race make-up, and a totally different surface. There are so many firsts that he has to deal with, and no matter what we do in this part of the world, we can’t replicate that. It’s very, very tough.

“With his pedigree, it was always going to be a possibility. He’s by Justify, who everyone knows was an unbeaten Triple Crown winner, on the dirt, and as a three-year-old. For us, to have a horse like him was always going to be very exciting, because we felt it would always give all our horses another dimension. They should be able to race on grass and on dirt.”

O’Brien is sending his largest-ever contingent to horse racing’s World Championships, pre-entering 18 horses as he looks to add to his tally of 18 Breeders’ Cup wins. The logistics behind this hop across the pond are precise, with City of Troy set to fly on Saturday, a trip plotted and planned for months. City of Troy has even been training at home using a set of American starting stalls, getting him used to the bell that sounds at the start of races.

Thoroughbreds are fickle, and there is a sense of quiet caution among O’Brien’s team. Last year, River Tiber, his big favourite for the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Turf, failed a vet’s inspection on the morning of his race and is winless since.

“Everything so far has gone well; obviously it’s a day-by-day thing at this time of year,” added O’Brien.

“His preparation is tough and has to be tough if he’s going to compete in one of, if not the toughest race in the world.

“They get on the plane in Shannon and fly across. They stay in quarantine for a few days, then get out on the track cantering. It’s usually basic stuff – horses are very uncomplicated mentally, they take it all in their stride.

“He’s a very independent thinker, he always was. He’s not influenced by what’s going on around him. If we have him in the right place, nothing else will bother him. At the moment, we are very happy. He’s not led by any set of circumstances going on around him, he’s his own horse.

“At this time of year, horses can go off very quickly; they can go off in 24 hours. We will try and have runners in most of the races if they are well.”

You are never far from an opinion in racing, and O’Brien is far too wise to spend much time listening to the noise.

In the USA, City of Troy’s bid for the Classic is attracting a mix of fascination and derision. Despite being top of the market, it’s hard to find anyone taking him too seriously, though American racing fans can take a rather insular approach to their sport.

They argue no horse has ever won the Classic without having their final race on an American dirt track, while only once in the race’s history, back in 1993, has a European raider won: Andre Fabre’s 133-1 shot Arcangues, still regarded as one of the sport’s greatest shocks.

In addition, O’Brien is 0-17 in the race, and his last Breeders’ Cup win of any kind on dirt was in 2001, with a 1-38 record. Ryan Moore, his star jockey, has tried 21 times to win on the surface and is still waiting for success.

“It’s a fool’s errand,” wrote one non-believer. “His preparation is like playing Grand Theft Auto before your driving test.”

To parachute in City of Troy seven days out from the race and hope to win his sport’s biggest prize is, said another, ‘at best foolhardy, at worst insulting.’

However, there is no bookmaker in the world who would give you odds on O’Brien engaging in any fighting talk to the contrary.

“There’s always scepticism from everybody, and everybody has an opinion, which they are entitled to have,” he said.

“I don’t really ever listen too much to negative things about anything. We make the decision, we have a belief, and then we do our best to try to make it happen after that. Who knows what’s going to happen, but we have to try, and when we believe in something, we have to keep going and do our best to help City of Troy perform to his best.

“Obviously, we’re visitors, and we’re grateful to be accepted to go and try and compete.”

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