By Paul Hayward
If the first half of the Flat season is for graduation ceremonies, this is the bit where Masters and PhDs are handed out.
To see Ryan Moore sit so beautifully on City Of Troy – and this year's best horse race round Southwell so fluidly – was to feel a surge of anticipation greater than before his seasonal reappearance for the 2,000 Guineas.
We all love spring and the history-laden game of labelling three-year-olds 'Classic' winners. But sorry, late summer and autumn is when we really get ready to rumble. Economics, Calandagan, Sosie, Look De Vega, Japan's Shin Emperor and of course City Of Troy all face defining tests.
As the old joke goes, if you designed a British racing calendar from scratch you wouldn't start from here. It remains a heresy to challenge the positioning of the Classics in racing's ancient cycle. Yet an impresario observing racing from the outside would view the Guineas, Derby and Oaks as private parties, prematurely held. A “disrupter” might be tempted to flip the calendar – and plonk the Classics in the second-half.
I can hear the howls from here – many from the grave. The Classics date back to the 18th Century and are the sport's foundation stones. But York in August, Newmarket's big late-season showdowns, the Arc, Breeders' Cup, Japan Cup and Champions Day at Ascot (which, many argue, falls too late) are Flat racing's true box office. They are inter-generational and shape our recollections of the year.
Traditionally in elite sport the climax comes at the end, not the beginning. Yet the first wave of coronations – for Newmarket and Epsom Classic winners – is overtaken by more universal anointments at the business end.
To move the Classics by more than a week or two would send bloodstock valuations haywire and traditionalists into apoplexy. But let's face it: unless the early Classic winners are exceptional, as, say, Frankel was in the 2,000 Guineas, those contests are a fading memory by the time the stalls slam open for the Arc or Breeders' Cup.
Globalisation was bound to eat away at the sanctity of the Guineas, Derby, Oaks and St Leger, as has today's preoccupation with speed over stamina.
Over the last three seasons William Haggas has trained two outstanding horses who never went near a Classic. One, Baaeed, was the highest-rated horse in Europe since Frankel, with six Group 1 wins, five over a mile, and the sixth over the 10 furlongs of the Juddmonte International – his grandest victory.
The other, Economics, was taken out of the Derby before his six-length win in the Dante Stakes – just about the best Derby trial. Haggas had already decided that Economics needed to be handled patiently. “It's a shame these races come up so quickly and he just needs some more time, that's my view,” Haggas said at York.
Criticised at the time for turning his back on Epsom, Haggas has since been vindicated. Economics has won the Prix Guillaume d'Ornano and the Irish Champion Stakes. He's now on track for a showdown with Calandagan in Ascot's Champion Stakes. If he wins that too, no breeder will mark him down as the horse who said no to the Derby; only as a late-maturing 10-furlong star who embellished his status by staying in his lane.
Frankel won the 2,000 Guineas in revolutionary style, but weirdly that romp is not the first thing you think of when recalling his career. It's the pulsating later wins against older horses and his triumphant step up to 10 furlongs that pop up first in the memory.
The defence of the Classics is that they are stepping stones, properly arranged, over centuries. The problem is, today's racing industry has many other routes, alternative temptations. A Guineas, Derby or Oaks winner is guaranteed historical permanence – but not always the immortality bestowed by multiple triumphs across age ranges, seasons and race distances.
City Of Troy's last mission couldn't be more compelling. His brief is to land one of the few big trophies to have eluded Aidan O'Brien and Coolmore's aim. In a throwback to an age when the great Flat racers were folk heroes, more than a thousand turned out at Southwell on Friday to see him grab the Tapeta surface in a trial to replicate – as far as possible, in Nottinghamshire – the pizzaz of California on Breeders' Cup day.
Much of this may not feel new, but I sense a shift, borne of global change, and logic. Owners and trainers are likely to think it more and more acceptable to regard the Classics as glittering targets but not the whole point of it all. There will be no moral obligation to try to win the Derby when so much lustre can be loaded onto a horse later in the season, in the big box office phase we're entering now.
A comparison with the somewhat diminished FA Cup lurks in my mind, but that might be overstating it. The lure of the Classics will endure. Their status as the pinnacle of Flat racing feels slightly less secure. Four of the five are over by the first week of June. Things change – even the most sacred ones. Autumn brings a vast harvest of delights. Enjoy the feast.
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