Monday September 23
The Times
City Of Troy is a wonder. Not for his performance in demolishing four inferior opponents on Southwell’s tapeta surface on Friday in preparation for his tilt at the Breeders’ Cup Classic in California in six weeks’ time, but for his demeanour throughout the longest day and the most extensive and expensive racing sparring session ever staged.
At 7.20am at Shannon Airport, City Of Troy stood at the bottom of the long-railed ramp from the tarmac up into the body of the 737, in which his four stablemates were already installed. Anyone who has even tried to load a pony into a trailer will know that standing and walking up willingly are too different things. Why should the world’s most valuable racehorse be any different?
Yet, here was human-equine conversation at its cutest. Pat Keating, Aidan O’Brien’s long-serving travel supremo, patted City Of Troy gently on the neck, let him look around for a few moments, and then gently but firmly led him all the way to the top of the ramp. There Pat paused, put his hand on the neck, the horse looked about him again, peered in at us inside, and then quietly stepped in to be greeted by the reassuring paternal bulk of his 43-year-old groom, Davey Hickey.
The inside of a 737 is neither that wide nor that high, and City Of Troy, while not massive, is still 16 hands and some 480 kilos of volatile athlete. If he raises his head fully upright, his ears touch the ceiling. Reassured of the arrangements, he then allows Pat and Davey to turn him around to back him into his stall so as to be facing forwards in flight. The whole process takes less than three minutes. No voices were raised. No other horses were hollering. It was as cool a thing as I have seen in more than 70 years around stables.
The flight to East Midlands Airport will take some 80 minutes, much the same as the box had taken to drive from Ballydoyle to Shannon. City Of Troy’s day started with a feed at 3.30am, Davey’s two hours before that, though, as he went out to feed his greyhounds. Davey has been around Ballydoyle since a boy as his father, Dennis, worked for Vincent O’Brien. Pat was first there in 1984, or in racing terms, “When Law Society was a two-year-old”. City Of Troy doesn’t look as if he needs reassurance, but it’s there in spades.
There are 18 of us on the plane, not only the grooms and farrier and cabin staff, but a seven-strong team to handle the special set of American starting stalls which, along with Ballydoyle’s own ambulance, had been driven out to Southwell to await us. Aidan O’Brien — who picked the track because it’s the nearest in surface to Del Mar, where the Breeders’ Cup will be staged — would fly in from Cork with Ryan Moore and his other jockeys after a full gallops’ morning on the training ground.
His talk of “leaving no stone unturned” suggests an anal obsession with detail, but this is tempered by an infectious and all-encompassing enthusiasm for the game that fills his every waking hour. It means that while our whole day was invested with immaculate, painstaking professionalism — there were two boxes to greet us at the airport, one for the horses, the other in case of breakdown — it was also full of the fun and thrill which comes with handling the fastest weight-carrying creature the world has ever seen.
The gallop gave us no more than promised, the sparring partners doing their best to hustle things until City Of Troy flattened them in the straight. The horse is just three years old. His value is into nine figures, but he is just a horse. After a wash down and a cooling walk, City Of Troy is in his box but starting to object as Pat bandages up his ice socks. “Don’t start that,” scolds Keating, with a teacher’s authority, “You might be a champion, but you keep manners on you.”
It was now a full hour since the end of the gallop, but back at the paddock O’Brien was still fielding questions from a battery of cameras and microphones. As it finally closed, a well-meaning friend tried to hustle him away to a waiting car. But there was a long queue of worshippers lined up for a word, a selfie and an autograph.
The astounding sums of money tied up in something as simple as one horse galloping faster than another demand a critical focus. But to watch the world’s most successful trainer going down the line for no greater reward than making another person’s day was to recall the name of Davey Hickey’s best greyhound. That name will suit if City Of Troy conquers America: Priceless Hero.