The price of success: City Of Troy casts a mighty shadow over Irish Champions Festival as promotion founders

You could almost hear the despairing shrieks emanating from the marketing bods in Horse Racing Ireland as the dispatches began to emerge from Ballydoyle on Monday. 

Racing's fourth estate had decamped en masse to Rosegreen for a pre-arranged media morning organised in the name of the Irish Champions Festival. It was a timely opportunity to get the newly branded weekend a bit of much-needed airtime because to say it has flown under the radar lately would be putting it mildly. 

City Of Troy has dominated the summer narrative and he is pointedly being directed away from Leopardstown's Royal Bahrain Irish Champion Stakes. Aidan O'Brien and the Coolmore conglomerate rarely miss a chance to promote what is the country's most prestigious Group 1 but on this occasion there was never really even a pretence the €1.25 million affair might be on the agenda. Their heads had been turned.