Eclipse (35 page)

When Mill House won the Gold Cup in 1963, the English thought that they had a horse who would dominate the event for many years. But the Irish were sure that they had an even better one. Mill House and Arkle first met later that year, in the Hennessy Gold Cup at Newbury, when Arkle slipped on landing three fences from home, and Mill House came out on top. The Irish still said their horse was superior. At Cheltenham the following spring, the rivals met again, in what was virtually a match: there were only two other horses in the race, and they were left a long way behind. It was what everyone wanted to see: Arkle and Mill House turning for home together, head to head. Then Arkle pulled clear, jumped the last, and accelerated up the Cheltenham hill to the finishing post. ‘This is the champion, ' Peter O'Sullevan, the commentator, called. ‘This is the best we've seen for a long time.'

O'Sullevan was right. The connections of Mill House tried to refute his verdict, but in three subsequent meetings, Arkle gave their horse ever more severe drubbings. Arkle won two more Gold Cups, and put up astonishing weight-carrying performances in handicaps, winning an Irish Grand National, two Hennessy Gold Cups and a Whitbread Gold Cup with up to 12st 7lb on his back.

Arkle ran his last race, the King George VI Chase, at Kempton Park on 27 December 1966.
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Aged nine, I was there.
It was the first time I had seen the already legendary steeplechaser in the flesh. I had ridden a horse once in my life, I had spent no time with horses, but I could tell, as Arkle appeared in front of the stands before the race, that this was the animal at the centre of the day's events: in his deportment, in his alertness, in what one can sum up only as his presence, he stood out from the rest. It was a bearing that the
Irish Times
had described as exhibiting ‘the dignity, the look of supreme assurance that marks a President de Gaulle'. In Ireland, Arkle was and still is ‘Himself'. He was almost unbeatable, and he was 9-2 on. I thought that I was there to see an exhibition.

I, and my cousin and his girlfriend, were standing by the rails on the inside of the course, near the last fence. We could not see much from there, but we were, briefly, very close to the action. As the field passed a few feet away at the end of the first circuit, all seemed well: Arkle was leading, and travelling comfortably. He maintained his lead, though not by far, on the second circuit. He jumped the final fence about five lengths in front of the second horse, who, I was told afterwards, was called Dormant. As they galloped past, I craned my neck over the rails (did someone lift me?). The two horses' receding backsides now appeared to be level. Something was wrong. The crowd noise had that eerie, muted quality you get at a football ground when the away team scores.

Arkle had lost. We learned later what had happened: he had staggered to the line with a broken bone in his foot. It was, for a nine-year-old boy expecting to return home aglow with the memory of a triumphant performance, a jolting anti-climax.

Once the disappointment had eased, I learned to accept that defeat for Arkle on that December day at Kempton was immaterial. He had nothing left to prove. He had earned the highest rating any chaser had ever received, or is ever likely to receive, and was so superior to his rivals that the rules of handicapping had to be specially adjusted to accommodate him. He was bombarded with letters and presents, and was the hero of poems and songs. Occasionally, a new champion gets mentioned in the same breath
as Arkle, but none challenges his position as, in the words of his biographer Sean Magee, ‘the presiding spirit of steeplechasing'.

Nijinsky (b. 1967)

Eclipse – Pot8os – Waxy – Whalebone – Sir Hercules – Birdcatcher – The Baron – Stockwell – Doncaster – Bend Or – Bona Vista – Cyllene – Polymelus – Phalaris – Pharos – Nearco – Nearctic – Northern Dancer – Nijinsky

Eclipse, and his descendant St Simon, seemed to those who saw them to be invincible. They were supreme. However, supremacy is not the only definition of greatness; sometimes, greatness is a quality that comes with flaws. It is a poignant syndrome, recognized ever since Achilles' mother neglected to allow the protective waters of the Styx to soak his ankles. I have always been drawn to sporting figures of brilliant talent who at key moments have been unable to prove their superiority: the Australian distance runner Ron Clarke, who broke numerous world records but never won a gold medal; the graceful tennis player Hana Mandlikova, so often betrayed by nerves on the big occasions; and the racehorse Nijinsky, effortlessly in command in all his races, until he ran in the most valuable race of all.

Nijinsky was the discovery of Vincent O'Brien. Few people in racing would disagree with a
Racing Post
poll that named O'Brien, a man of restrained bearing and uncanny judgement, the outstanding trainer of the twentieth century. In National Hunt racing, he sent out the winners of three consecutive Grand Nationals, three consecutive Gold Cups (four in all), and three Champion Hurdles. Turning to the Flat, and setting up stables at Ballydoyle in Tipperary, he had similar success, and eventually won six Derbies. In 1968, the year of his colt Sir Ivor's Epsom victory, O'Brien spotted the year-old Nijinsky on a farm in Ontario, Canada. ‘He really filled my eye, ' he explained later. He
recommended the colt to Charles Engelhard, a jowly industrialist who was one of the leading racehorse owners of the time.
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Nijinsky was the champion two-year-old in 1969, won the following year's 2, 000 Guineas, Derby and Irish Derby with ease, and put up his finest performance in the King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes at Ascot, cantering past a classy field of older horses. By this time, there was more public recognition for Nijinsky than any British or Irish Flat racer had gained for many years – and more than any has gained since. He looked magnificent; like Arkle, he radiated class. To add to his charisma, there was the impassive presence on his back of Lester Piggott, the most talented jockey of his generation.
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Piggott was notoriously laconic, apparently no more excited about winning a Derby than he was about victory in a lowly selling race; but he certainly appreciated Nijinsky. ‘That day, ' he said about the King George, ‘he was the most impressive horse I ever sat on.'

What went wrong with Nijinsky is debatable. About of ringworm following the King George cannot have helped: the colt lost nearly all his hair. Nevertheless, Vincent O'Brien got him ready for the St Leger, and in September at Doncaster Nijinsky became the first horse since Bahram in 1935 to win the Triple Crown.
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He seemed to do it as effortlessly as ever, and Piggott did not push him. Only with the benefit of hindsight did one notice that the horse had no energy to spare.

Three weeks later, Nijinsky stepped on to the Longchamp turf for the contest that O'Brien and Engelhard intended to be the glorious conclusion to his career: the Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe, the most valuable race in Europe. There was a huge crowd, and a
good portion of it invaded the Longchamp paddock in an effort to get close to the celebrated horse. Always highly strung, Nijinsky got very worked up; he was sweating and on his toes, and Piggott had a hard job controlling him as they cantered to the start.

Nijinsky was drawn on the outside of the field, a position that forced Piggott, when the race got underway, to drop in behind the other runners. I can still remember Peter O'Sullevan's commentary, my best guide as I watched the race on a tiny black and white television. Nijinsky was near the back of the field, fourth from last; the field was nearing the entrance to the home straight, and still there were only three horses behind him, while a wall of horses was in front. Unable to get an opening, Piggott lost ground and momentum by taking his mount wide. At last Nijinsky got into gear, came charging down the outside, and with the winning post in sight caught the leader, Sassafras, and pushed his nose in front – then he swerved, and the two horses hit the line, seemingly together. The judge called for a photo. The angle of the television cameras at Longchamp, giving a deceptive view of finishes, left viewers uncertain about the result. At the course, O'Brien was surrounded by well-wishers telling him that his horse had won, but he could sense, as we could at home, that the verdict was not going to go the right way. In those days, you had to wait for the photograph to be developed. But soon came the inevitable announcement: Sassafras was the winner, by a head.

Piggott received a lot of stick. He had let Nijinsky get too far behind the leaders; he had waited too long; it was an impossible task to make up that amount of ground in the short Longchamp straight – that was what the critics said, and O'Brien agreed. But even the outstanding trainer of the twentieth century can get things wrong, as O'Brien was immediately to demonstrate. Deciding that Nijinsky was back on form and ready to sign off his career victoriously, he sent over the colt just two weeks later for the Champion Stakes at Newmarket.

‘The moment I saw Nijinsky in the parade ring, ' Piggott
said, ‘I could tell that he had not got over the Arc experience: he was a nervous wreck, and the huge crowd which had turned out to bid him farewell just made matters worse.' Nijinsky ran sluggishly, and finished second again,
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a performance offering strong evidence that he had been past his best on Arc day too. The Nijinsky of a few months earlier would have had no trouble in winning at Longchamp, even from his backward position in the field.
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But what happened to him at Longchamp and Newmarket is a common syndrome: since 1970, numerous fine horses have demonstrated how hard it is to maintain scintillating form throughout a long season.
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I had wanted Nijinsky to win the Arc very badly. He was the best horse: he should have won. I still get a pang when I think about it, and I find the video of the race painful to watch. But I think that the defeat strengthened Nijinsky's hold on my imagination. The following year, another exceptional colt, Mill Reef, won the Derby, Eclipse Stakes and the King George, and went on to Longchamp and won the Arc as well. Mill Reef was a more durable horse than Nijinsky, and may have been a better one; but he never excited me as much.
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The story is not really sad. Nijinsky enjoyed a contented life at stud at Claiborne Farm in Kentucky, and sired the Derby winners Golden Fleece, Shahrastani and Lammtarra. Moreover, his racecourse performances had an extraordinary effect. They alerted the world to the ability of his sire Northern Dancer, who at his base on Windfields Farm in Maryland went on to set a record, still unbroken, for the highest covering fee in history. And they inspired the growth of racing and breeding empires whose policy, pursued in a more determined way than anyone had seen before, was to corner the market in the best bloodlines.

Nijinsky was syndicated for $5.5 million, following a common practice among owners of top stallions in the second half of the twentieth century. You have to spread the risk, as you would in any corporate venture. While the valuation of stallions is enormous, their failure rate – and this includes some of the best racers – is frightening. So you distribute the ownership, sharing the costs and the profits among, say, forty partners, each getting the right to send one mare to the stallion a season.

Some stallions, such as Dubai Millennium (see below), die young; a few, like the American champion Cigar, turn out to be infertile; most simply get offspring who do not run very fast. The successful ones, however, are by a huge margin the biggest earners in racing. At six-figure fees for each mare they cover, they perform more than a hundred coverings a season, and they can keep it up for twenty years or longer. What they earned on the racecourse was insignificant by comparison. The point of racing, for the heaviest hitters in the industry, is not the actual sport, but what goes on in the breeding shed. The logical strategy, then, is to do systematically what Vincent O'Brien and Charles Engelhard did with Nijinsky: annex the best bloodlines, spot the potential stallions early, race them, and retire them to stud. Dennis O'Kelly would have been at home in the modern bloodstock world.

Engelhard did not see this policy come to fruition, dying at the age of fifty-four in 1971. O'Brien pursued it with two partners:
his son-in-law John Magnier, and Robert Sangster. Magnier, who ran the Coolmore stud and is now in charge of the entire international business, is a fearsome and laconic operator about whom it has been observed that the softest part of his head is his teeth. Sangster, heir to the Vernons pools business, was (he died of cancer in 2004) exuberant, a generous giver of parties and a lover of the jet-setting life that came with international racehorse ownership. O'Brien himself is modest and courteous. In the 1970s and early 1980s, this unusual threesome would descend on the sales in Keeneland and Saratoga and buy up the best yearlings – offspring of Northern Dancer in particular – they could find. Prices rocketed, and Northern Dancer's stud fee rose to $1 million.

There have been several outcomes of the bloodstock boom of the 1970s and 1980s. One is that Coolmore has grown into the most powerful bloodstock operation in the world. Another, that racing, at the very top level, is no longer a pursuit for aristocrats, unless they engage in it with the ambition and ruthlessness required in big business. The Queen was the leading owner on the British Turf in 1954 and 1957; she is nowhere near that position today, and she last enjoyed success in a Classic in her Silver Jubilee year, 1977.
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There is of course a third outcome: the boom in breeding Classic colts and fillies, who would go on themselves to breed world-class offspring, strengthened the dominance of the bloodline from Eclipse.

Secretariat (b. 1970)

Eclipse – Pot8os – Waxy – Whalebone – Sir Hercules – Birdcatcher – The Baron – Stockwell – Doncaster – Bend Or – Bona Vista – Cyllene – Polymelus – Phalaris – Pharos – Nearco – Nasrullah – Bold Ruler – Secretariat