City Of Troy gets a C grade for his Eclipse win and I wouldn't back him for the Juddmonte International

If you told me on Saturday morning that the highlight of my trip to Sandown on Saturday was seeing John Barnes do his World In Motion rap, I would have said you were stark raving mad, not because I hadn't been pre-warned that Barnsey was in attendance and that England were playing football later that evening, but because I was expecting to see a really exciting performance from City Of Troy in the Coral-Eclipse.

The first thing to say is that, having been brought up within earshot of Sandown's racecourse commentary, I know full well how hard it is to look good up that hill on soft ground and City Of Troy probably won with a lot more in hand than the official margin suggests. However, he did look pretty lethargic throughout the contest, the time was really slow in comparison with some handicaps later on the card and the worst thing of all was how he hung towards the rail up the straight.

He hung a bit to his right at Epsom on the camber too but I thought nothing of it because he had a loose horse in his way that day. It was really marked at Sandown though, and I can't remember too many superstar horses who did that and continued to be good horses, or weren't diagnosed with an issue of some sort later in their career.