Nobody is afraid of City Of Troy in belting Juddmonte and rightly so - take him on with this emerging star

Whatever moving parts collided to cause this atypical field size for the Juddmonte International should be welcomed. Thirteen runners in a middle-distance Group 1 is a real throwback, something even the most optimistic of observers would have struggled to foresee before declarations. 

In the four runnings of Britain’s three big summer ten-furlong Group 1s from 2020 to 2023, only 67 horses turned up. There were 24 in the Prince of Wales’s Stakes, 21 in the Eclipse and 22 in the Juddmonte. This year Royal Ascot's Wednesday highlight attracted a field of ten but City Of Troy defeated just five rivals at Sandown.

A combination of the vulnerabilities City Of Troy showed in the Eclipse last time and the boosted prize-money York is serving up relative to that race and the Prince of Wales’s have surely contributed to this jam-packed running.