O’Brien plotting separate Classic routes for star juveniles

City Of Troy and Henry Longfellow likely to follow different paths in 2024.

Aidan O’Brien has confirmed his intention to split his Classic aces next spring, with Henry Longfellow unlikely to take on his esteemed stablemate City of Troy in the Qipco 2000 Guineas.

While Henry Longfellow has done nothing wrong in winning each of his three juvenile starts, it was City Of Troy for whom O’Brien reserved the highest praise, stating after his Dewhurst success at Newmarket in October: “He is the best two-year-old we’ve trained, there’s no doubt.”

City Of Troy is best-priced evens favourite for the 2000 Guineas at Newmarket in May and while bookmakers rate his stablemate as his biggest threat, he could instead head to the French equivalent.

“I’d imagine that City Of Troy and Henry Longfellow will be kept apart for as long as the lads want to do that,” O’Brien told Sporting Life.

“We’re obviously thinking that City of Troy will be trained for Newmarket and then Henry Longfellow might be trained for France.

“If everything went well with City Of Troy at Newmarket, he could go straight on to Epsom (for the Derby) whereas the other horse could do the Curragh (Irish 2,000 Guineas) and Ascot (St James’s Palace Stakes) or something like that. There’s lots of scenarios that could happen I suppose.”

O’Brien has not been shy in pointing out City Of Troy’s extraordinary ability and continues to be effusive in his praise.

City Of Troy and Ryan Moore at Newmarket
City Of Troy and Ryan Moore at Newmarket (Tim Goode/The Jockey Club)

He added: “He’s the first horse we’ve had come along to show such class and courage, without us feeling that we’ve got to the last gear yet.

“He always had lovely balance, a lovely shape and a lovely mind. He was a lovely size of a horse, not too big and not too small. He looked the ideal horse all the way along really.”

Reflecting on his Dewhurst success and the feedback he received from jockey Ryan Moore, O’Brien added: “We just felt that we hadn’t had a horse like him before.

“Ryan was so confident in the horse that he really felt it didn’t matter what the ground was going to be like or anything else. He didn’t think he’d ridden a horse like this before, either – he’s always felt that this horse was different.”

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