Eclipse (34 page)

Fred Archer (1857–1886) won greater fame than has been accorded to any other English jockey. Sir Charles Bunbury and other men of the Turf of Eclipse's day, when jockeys were ‘boys' and when the upstart Sam Chifney got his comeuppance, would not have approved of this adulation, and Admiral Rous would have regretted it too. Rous ‘was courteous and considerate to jockeys, but nothing would have induced him to invite one to his dinner table'.
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This, though, was a new era, of mass communication; an era that nurtured celebrity. Horseracing, which had featured only patchily in the public prints until the mid-nineteenth century, was widely reported, and jockeys were the public faces of the sport. Archer was the finest of them, a man of unmatchable talent and willpower. Only Gordon Richards, in the first half of the twentieth century, and Lester Piggott, in the second half, have come close to achieving the same level of public recognition. ‘Archer's up!' people would say, to indicate that all was well with the world.

All, however, was not well with Archer. He was obsessively determined, as top jockeys must be, and he earned the nickname ‘The Tinman' owing to his relish for making money. In his seventeen seasons, he rode a third of his eight thousand mounts to victory; he won the Derby five times, the Oaks four times, and the St Leger six times. But he put himself through some terrible punishment to gain these successes. A tall man, he could keep himself under nine stone only by restricting his lunch to a biscuit and a small glass of champagne, sometimes resorting also to a fierce purgative known as ‘Archer's Mixture'. When, in autumn 1886, he contracted a fever after wasting down to 8st 7lb to ride in the Cambridgeshire handicap, he lacked the physical resources to fight the illness. Delirium compounded the depression he had suffered
since the recent death of his young wife, and on 8 November he shot himself.

St Simon sired Persimmon, the best horse to be raced by a member of the British royal family. When Albert Edward (‘Bertie'), the Prince of Wales, led in the victorious Persimmon after the 1896 Derby, top hats filled the air, and the cheering echoed round the Epsom Downs. A film of the finish of the race was projected in London theatres to thrilled audiences, who demanded several repeats and sang ‘God bless the Prince of Wales'. Persimmon went on to win the St Leger, and the following season won the Ascot Gold Cup as well as a new, prestigious race: the Eclipse Stakes. Fabergé later modelled him in silver.

This was the moment at which the supremacy of the Eclipse line was ensured. ‘[St Simon] and his descendants, ' the Thoroughbred Heritage website asserts, ‘[dominated] global racing at the turn of the 20th century and for decades after.' St Simon's greatness confirmed Eclipse as the greatest sire of all.

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Seabiscuit, the American folk hero of the 1930s, descended on the side of his sire, Hard Tack, from the Godolphin Arabian and Matchem – although his dam, Swing On, was from the Eclipse line.

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From
The Sporting Magazine
, quoted by Judy Egerton in
George Stubbs, Painter
. Different standards of behaviour towards the horse prevailed then. Today, there are no spurs of course, and jockeys get punished for excessive use of the whip.

¹⁵⁷
From the
Biographical Encyclopaedia of British Flat Racing
.

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The enclosures that house betting rings on racecourses are often known as Tattersalls, or ‘Tatts'.

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Longrigg's candidate for the top spot is Henry Padwick. See the essay on Hermit, coming up.

¹⁶⁰
Quoted in
Derby Day 200
(1979).

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Some historians say that he was the third. The first, by their count, was Charles II, and the second was Tregonwell Frampton, the eccentric ‘Keeper of the running horses at Newmarket' under William III, Queen Anne, George I and George II.

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The Derby is for three-year-old colts and fillies. Goodman's cheat was not unprecedented. The trainer for five-times Derby winner Lord Egremont admitted that he had twice won the race with four-year-olds.

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A four-year-old competing against three-year-olds at this time of year would normally carry 11lb more on his back, to compensate for his greater maturity.

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See chapter 6.

¹⁶⁵
From the
Biographical Encyclopaedia of British Flat Racing
.

L
ISTS OF THE GREATEST
horses in history are male-dominated. Does that mean that fillies and mares are not as good? Overall, yes it does. But five fillies have, albeit with weight allowances, beaten the colts to win the Derby. Sixteen fillies, most recently the outstanding Zarkava, have won Europe's richest race, the Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe. Three fillies have won the Kentucky Derby. In 2007, the filly Rags to Riches won the Belmont Stakes, defeating Curlin – and Curlin went on to win the world's two richest races. Fillies and mares are certainly as popular as their male counterparts, and often more so: racing fans tend to ascribe special qualities of pluck and fortitude to females doing battle with male rivals.

Sceptre (born in 1899)

Eclipse – King Fergus – Hambletonian – Whitelock – Blacklock – Voltaire – Voltigeur – Vedette – Galopin – St Simon – Persimmon – Sceptre

Pretty Polly (b. 1901)

Eclipse – Pot8os – Waxy – Whalebone – Sir Hercules – Birdcatcher – Oxford – Sterling – Isonomy – Gallinule – Pretty Polly
Two of the best and most popular female racehorses raced in the early years of the twentieth century. Sceptre won four Classics, but may be best known for a race she lost. Pretty Polly acquired such a formidable reputation that she started favourite for twentythree of her twenty-four races, and in twenty-one of them was at odds-on.

Sceptre needed a big supply of pluck and fortitude, because she had an owner, a gambler called Robert Sievier, who put her through an exceptionally gruelling schedule. From April to June 1902, she ran in the 2, 000 Guineas, 1, 000 Guineas, Derby, Oaks, Grand Prix de Paris, and two races at Royal Ascot. In the autumn, she cemented her position as ‘the country's sweetheart' with victory in the St Leger. But Sievier, on a winning streak as a punter when he bought Sceptre, hit a losing one that her exploits could not offset, and he sold her the following spring. Under new ownership, she lined up in July 1903 for the ten-furlong Eclipse Stakes at Sandown. Over the next ninety-seven years, only a few contests would challenge this one for the title of race of the century.

The owners of Sandown Park had wanted to stage a race to make a mark with their recently established course. With backing from Leopold de Rothschild, they offered a huge purse of £10, 000 (double the prize that went to the winner of the Derby), and appropriated the most prestigious of racing names: Eclipse. The Eclipse Stakes, inaugurated in 1886, was the first contest of the year in which older horses met the Classic generation of threeyear-olds. Sceptre's main rivals in 1903 were Ard Patrick, winner of the previous year's Derby – the only one of the five Classics that Sceptre had missed out on; and Rock Sand, winner of that year's 2, 000 Guineas and Derby. ‘All the rings were packed to suffocation, and everybody was keyed up to the highest pitch of excitement, ' a contemporary report noted, and the three rivals lived up to the occasion by staging an epic. Turning into the home straight, Ard Patrick hit the front, and was immediately challenged by Sceptre, with Rock Sand drawing alongside. With two furlongs
to go, Rock Sand started to lose touch, and Sceptre edged ahead; but, as the crowd bellowed encouragement at the filly, Ard Patrick timed a last effort to get back up on the line and win by a neck. (In the autumn, Sceptre again defeated Rock Sand – who by then had completed the Triple Crown by winning the St Leger.)

While Sceptre and Pretty Polly had overlapping careers, they did not meet on the racecourse. Pretty Polly won the ‘Fillies' Triple Crown' (1, 000 Guineas, Oaks, St Leger), and suffered only two defeats – the second, to the consternation of the Ascot crowd, in the last race of her career, the Ascot Gold Cup. Unfashionably bred, she appeared not to be a success at stud, and was not a solicitous mother. Only later did it become apparent that her descendants included an impressive number of outstanding racers.

Phar Lap (b. 1926)

Eclipse – Pot8os – Waxy – Whalebone – Sir Hercules – Birdcatcher – The Baron – Stockwell – Doncaster – Bend Or – Radium – Night Raid – Phar Lap

Like Seabiscuit (who was not an Eclipse male-line descendant), Phar Lap was a hero of the Depression. His tremendous exploits lit up a bleak time, and made him the most famous racer in New Zealand and Australian history. This fame inspired people, as Eclipse's fame had done, to take more than usual interest in his anatomy, their findings offering an interesting theory about the Eclipse legacy.

Phar Lap's story, again like Seabiscuit's, has been well documented in print and on film. Phar Lap – the name derives from a Thai word for lightning – was foaled in Timaru, New Zealand, and was sold for just 160 guineas. He grew into a giant chestnut, standing at over seventeen hands. Probably needing to mature into his frame, he began his career moderately, before running up a tremendous sequence of races, including fourteen in a row without
defeat. In Australia's most prestigious horserace, the Melbourne Cup, Phar Lap was third in 1929, first in 1930 (carrying 9st 12lb) and unplaced in 1931 when asked to carry the impossible burden of 10st 10lb. After that, Phar Lap travelled to Mexico for the Agua Caliente Handicap, the richest prize ever given in North American racing. He won, in track record time. Two weeks later he was dead, for reasons about which there is still debate. Some suspect poisoning.

At autopsy, Phar Lap was discovered to have an abnormally large heart – the same weight, 14lb, as Eclipse's. The theory is that it was an inheritance – not through the male side of his pedigree, but through a daughter of Eclipse called Everlasting (and tracing back to a stallion called Hautboy). The large heart characteristic, so the theory goes, is carried by a gene on the X chromosome, which a father can transmit only to a daughter.
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But this is just a theory. Understanding what the approximately 2.7 billion base pairs of horse genomic DNA do, how they interact with one another, how they are passed on by mare and stallion during reproduction, and how they are expressed in the resulting foal, is going to be the work of the next several decades.

Phar Lap's remains, like Eclipse's, were preserved. His heart is at the National Museum of Australia in Canberra; his hide is at the National Museum of Victoria in Melbourne; and his skeleton is at the National Museum of New Zealand in Wellington.

Arkle (b. 1957)

Eclipse – Pot8os – Waxy – Whalebone – Sir Hercules –Birdcatcher – The Baron – Stockwell – Doncaster – Bend Or – Bona Vista – Cyllene – Polymelus – Phalaris – Pharos – Nearco – Archive – Arkle
As we have seen, Eclipse exerted an unparalleled influence on the development of horseracing, around the world. His two principal contributions – speedier, more precocious Thoroughbreds and, indirectly, an industrialized bloodstock industry – are mostly phenomena of Flat racing. But Eclipse's name is all over National Hunt pedigrees too. The line from him through the stallions Phalaris and Nearco that resulted in Nijinsky also produced the greatest horse in the history of steeplechasing.

Steeplechasing has its origins in matches over the countryside towards some landmark, such as a steeple. In the early nineteenth century, aficionados bred greater speed into these contests by mating their stout mares with Thoroughbred racers.
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Cheltenham, which is to jump racing what Newmarket is to the Flat, first staged its Grand Annual Steeplechase – still a feature of the Cheltenham Festival – in 1834, despite the antipathy of the Rev. (later Dean) F. C. Close, who had deplored the atmosphere of the town during race week. ‘It is scarcely possible to turn our steps in any direction without hearing the voice of the blasphemous, or meeting the reeling drunkard, or witnessing scenes of the lowest profligacy, ' he expostulated.

Yes, Cheltenham's contemporary inhabitants might agree, that sounds familiar.

The first official Grand National, at Aintree in Liverpool, took place in 1839,
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when Captain Becher, on Conrad, fell into one of the brooks; he remounted, and on the second circuit fell into it again. Ever after, it was Becher's Brook. Our enduring image of poor Becher, one of the crack jockeys of the day, is of a man lying dazed in a stream while his rivals jump over him.

For many years, the Grand National was the most important
race in the National Hunt (the name indicates the roots of the sport) calendar. But, gradually, the Cheltenham Gold Cup gained recognition as the blue riband event. The race that fixed the Gold Cup in the public consciousness as the Derby of steeplechasing was another candidate for race of the century: the 1964 showdown between the hero of Ireland, Arkle, and the defending champion from England, Mill House.