Flatter: Why City Of Troy will not win the Breeders’ Cup Classic

Stand by for one of those declarations that leads to stupid bets being paid off. Like the time I dared someone to yell my name so loudly at a Knicks road game that it could be heard back in New York on the telecast. More than a decade later, my wife still remembers the stupidity that led to my having to pay off that steak dinner.

Twelve years ago Aaron Rodgers went on the artist formerly known as Twitter and insisted that his friend Ryan Braun was not a juicing baseball star. He promised some guy in Denver a year’s salary if Braun ever failed a drug test. Even at the bargain rate of $4.5 million, Rodgers apparently did not pay up.

Where does NBC’s Nick Luck weigh in on this?

Never one to learn my lesson, I had to pay off four dinners after I boldly proclaimed the Oakland Raiders never would move to Las Vegas.

Against that backdrop, here goes nothing. It says here City Of Troy will not win the Breeders’ Cup Classic, because Coolmore is going about it all wrong.

Quick show of hooves. How many horses have won America’s most valuable dirt race with a final prep on the other side of the ocean, without a U.S. breeze and with connections who habitually have not won on a main track in America?

For City Of Troy’s much-ballyhooed final gallop in Europe before going into quarantine, Coolmore went to the trouble of recruiting four workmates and as many other riders. It also hauled in what was said to be a U.S. starting gate to the track in Southwell, England, where the dirt was as fake as the sincerity of a Division 1 basketball coach.

That run around the synthetic loam was photographed with a camera so far away that I thought Roger Bannister was going to come into the frame to finish the first human four-minute mile.

Like a quarterback who skips the combine to throw in front of NFL scouts, City Of Troy was declared to be a can’t-miss proposition for the $7 million Classic at Del Mar. The evidence comes from London bookmakers who have shortened him to as little as a 2-1 favorite to win a race that has been run 38 times on real dirt and won all of once by a horse from Europe. Ah, the fluke who was Arcangues at 133-1 in 1993.

The other 37 winners came from North America. They breezed and prepped and got bathed and ate and slept in North America. They were battle-tested on real tracks against real horses and real jockeys from North America. The idea that this four-decade trend can be changed with some transoceanic answer to playing Grand Theft Auto before a driver’s test feels like a fool’s errand.

Now throw in some bald-faced statistics. Trainer Aidan O’Brien is 0-for-17 in the Breeders’ Cup Classic. Of his 18 wins in the self-proclaimed world championships, the only one on real dirt was with Johannesburg in the Juvenile. That was in 2001. That makes him 1-for-38.

Working mostly with O’Brien, jockey Ryan Moore has yet to find any success on U.S. dirt. Not just in the Breeders’ Cup. He is 0-for-21 on our soil, and it has been nearly six years since he even tried to change that. Moore has been on the favorite only twice, but that zero might have contributed to the low number. Chicken and egg. In this case, they equal a duck.

There is no doubting O’Brien and Moore are among the best who ever have worked at their crafts anywhere in the world. That does not make them impervious to potential holes in their résumés. There is nothing more gnashing to loyal U.S. racing fans than hearing someone from over there snort that Secretariat was not as accomplished on turf as he was on dirt. Never mind that he was 2-for-2 on grass with a track record and a farewell victory. That message still may be in a bottle.

So here I am making a crass pronouncement about Europe’s best active trainer and best active jockey and two men whose faces could be carved on a Mount Rushmore of racing if only such a thing existed outside a remote mountain location far from the 13 colonies.

Just because O’Brien and Moore cannot win on our dirt does not water down their accomplishments. Frankel was the best turf miler of all time, and Winx never took her winning streak outside of Australia. Are we to question their greatness just because they never got their passports stamped?

We can, however, question the ability to succeed outside the individual terms of professional engagement. I would not expect Shohei Ohtani to succeed in the NFL. At least not without a full training camp.

Bring O’Brien and Moore over here to compete every day on our dirt tracks, and I have every confidence they would succeed wildly. The same goes for City Of Troy. That is just the point. Instead of spending a few months over here, team Coolmore is parachuting in, hoping to cash a $3.64 million check. At best it is foolhardy. At worst it is insulting.

I have as much conviction in the belief that City Of Troy will not win the Breeders’ Cup Classic as I have been in my contention that the UAE Derby never will produce a Kentucky Derby winner.

Technically, I have been right about that, but only by two noses. In truth Forever Young proved me wrong five months ago. Only a little bit of racing luck kept me from having to pay off on more than just the one bet where I said he would not finish in the money. I owe a colleague a serving of hard liquor for that.

Dan Bankhead, the first Black pitcher in Major League Baseball, got into a clubhouse debate with a better-known pioneer back in the day. More than 70 years ago, Bankhead declared to his Brooklyn Dodgers teammate Jackie Robinson, “Not only are you wrong, Robinson. You are loud wrong.”

If City Of Troy wins Nov. 2 at Del Mar, I shall be just that.

Ron Flatter’s column appears Friday mornings at Horse Racing Nation. Comments below and at RonFlatterRacingPod@gmail.com are welcomed, encouraged and may be used in the feedback segment of the Ron Flatter Racing Pod, which also is posted every Friday.