Doubt Eradicated: City Of Troy Has Our Full Engagement 

There are seven basic plots in fiction – and around the same number in sport. One is the removal of doubt. In language that no actual person ever used, Fleet Street newspapers used to love a win that “silenced the knockers.”

Racing is not short of those narratives but is unique in attaching them to animals who can't give press conferences, offer excuses, or just say they had an off day. Hence the debate is free to rage around whether a horse such as City Of Troy is as good as some claim he is. And rage, it does.

Sides are drawn. Opinions are overstated. Agitation grows. Therapists will tell you that the need to be right all the time is a symptom of insecurity – that a fragile ego is threatened when someone disagrees. But let's not get into that. Let's just say that, with his Juddmonte International Stakes win, City Of Troy chased his critics off the Knavesmire. What the hell are we going to argue about now?

I don't mean to make disagreements sound like a bad thing. 'It's the difference of opinion that makes a horse race,' is a familiar adage. And a confession: shortly before the Derby an old friend and I agreed over lunch that we would “lay” City Of Troy for Epsom all day long. Fortunately our bravado was not heard beyond our table, and I would not be confessing to it now, except to show that every last one of us is capable of zeroing in one small part of a picture while ignoring the rest.

That small part was City Of Troy's 2,000 Guineas flop, which was ominous for many reasons, the main one being the almost audible popping of his chance three furlongs out before he trailed in ninth. It was hard to expunge the listlessness of that performance from the memory. Even the precedent of Auguste Rodin bombing in the Guineas and then winning the Derby only 12 months previously failed to provide comfort. No, City Of Troy was bound for the fat file of champion two-year-olds who don't train on.

At York, City Of Troy found the point of full engagement, complete commitment, where we saw the best of him, we saw all of him: the full City Of Troy, not just the suburbs of his being

But a more nuanced debate was still to come. His Derby win was emphatic. His victory in the Eclipse Stakes at Sandown on ground that Aidan O'Brien called softer than expected was harder to judge, and prone to the kind of negative interpretation that City Of Troy has now shown to be wrong. The Eclipse win was hard fought. It often is. The last Derby winner to follow up in the Sandown race had been Golden Horn in 2015. 

All this is leading to me pointing a finger at an article of faith in horse racing – the religious orthodoxy of form lines, data, numbers, maths. Maybe nine times out of 10 form is the best handrail for predicting what might happen in a race. Form is order in the midst of chaos. Yet there are other factors in sport that don't always show themselves numerically: talent, natural ability, the human or equine gifts that separate the good from the great.

At Epsom we saw City Of Troy's ability to handle undulations, a camber and a mile and a half. We saw his capacity to quicken. In the Eclipse we observed his ability to overcome tactical complications and scrap with older horses. In the International Stakes, though, a more profound point was made. Doubt was eradicated, not just by the stats, but the evidence of the eye.

It was a symphonic win: the record-breaking pace of the first mile, the smooth upping of the ante by Ryan Moore in the straight, the relentless rhythm to the line, the vain pursuit by Calandagan and the rest of a high-class field, the course record, beating the immortal Sea The Stars's time in 2009. And then the struggle for Moore after the line to pull him up.

At York, City Of Troy found the point of full engagement, complete commitment, where we saw the best of him, we saw all of him: the full City Of Troy, not just the suburbs of his being.

Even his starting price – 5-4 – spoke of lingering uncertainty about how good he is. Anyone who took it will now feel they had a licence to print money. His SP at Sandown had been 1-4. The runner-up in the Eclipse, Al Riffa, had not won since September 2022. In the form book, City Of Troy sounds like he was under siege: “Pushed along over 2f out, led up the centre over 1f. soon ridden and hung right, against far rail inside final 110yds, kept on.” It made him sound like an old steeplechaser.

O'Brien, Moore and Coolmore never lost faith. They knew from the gallops that City Of Troy's talent was indisputable. He just needed to show it in a single display that would elevate him to unqualified recognition.

Bunfights over a horse's true quality are to be welcomed. They keep the analytical brain in business. But more enjoyable is the ending of those disputes, when we all agree and head off home, thrilled by 2m 4.32 secs of brilliance.