Eclipse (36 page)

With Secretariat, we return to the champion as invincible athlete.
Actually, Secretariat was beaten a few times, through bad luck, careless preparation and, once, disqualification. In the races that mattered, though, he was awesome.

The US Triple Crown races take place over five weeks in May and June. They are the Kentucky Derby, over one and a quarter miles at Churchill Downs; the Preakness Stakes, over a mile and one and a half furlongs at Pimlico; and the Belmont Stakes, over one and a half miles at Belmont Park. They are quite unlike the tests that horses face in the English Classics. The course at Newmarket (the 2, 000 Guineas) is a straight mile, with a dip and then a rising finish; the contestants at Epsom (the Derby) go on a roller-coaster ride over the Downs; Doncaster (the St Leger) is a park course, but nevertheless has uphill and downhill sections. American tracks are all flat, left-handed ovals, and they have dirt surfaces
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– turf racing is less important in the US.

Secretariat entered the Kentucky Derby, on the first Saturday in May in 1973, as the favourite, but on the back of a defeat and facing doubts over whether he would stay the distance. When the gates opened, it soon became clear that his stamina would face a proper test, because his jockey, Ron Turcotte, dropped him to the back of the field, from where he was forced to race wide to gain a position. In spite of that disadvantage, the reddish chestnut colt with the blue and white chequered blinkers powered home, in a time that has never been bettered. In the Preakness Stakes, two weeks later, Turcotte again started slowly, and this time drove his mount past the entire field early in the back stretch. Any normal horse would have used up too much energy in that manoeuvre. Secretariat, however, kept on going. His victory margins over the second horse, Sham, and the third, Our Native, were the same as they had been in the Derby. Only the
timing was in dispute: unofficial clockers recorded that Secretariat had broken the Pimlico track record, although the official timing device did not.

Secretariat was by now a national figure, a cover star of
Time
and
Newsweek
. His defining race awaited him, and at Belmont Park on 9 June he and Sham went into battle once more, with Secretariat aiming to become the first Triple Crown winner for twenty-five years. It was brutal: the two colts fought for the lead at an apparently suicidal pace. Before the end of the back stretch Sham dropped away, broken, as Bucephalus had been when trying to match strides with Eclipse. Sham finished last, and never raced again. Secretariat carried on galloping relentlessly. ‘He is moving like a tremendous machine!' the commentator yelled. In the home straight, Turcotte looked back; he would have needed binoculars to get a proper view of his nearest pursuer. The rest were nowhere. Secretariat passed the post thirty-one lengths in front. He had set a new world record for twelve furlongs, and as Turcotte
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tried to pull him up, he passed the thirteen-furlong marker in a new world record as well. ‘It is hard to conceive, 'Tony Morris and John Randall wrote, ‘how any horse in history could have lived with him, at any distance, on that magic afternoon of 9 June 1973.'

In 1972, Secretariat had been the first two-year-old to be named Horse of the Year. This award is the climax of a ceremony staged each January in Beverly Hills to honour the stars of horseracing: it is known as the Eclipse Awards. A Triple Crown winner and American sporting hero, Secretariat was a shoo-in as the 1973 Horse of the Year as well.

Secretariat was another of Eclipse's descendants to boast an unusually large heart. How large we do not know for sure, because it was never weighed; the veterinarian who examined him, Dr
Thomas Swerczek, thought that it was at least twice as large as normal. A few years after Secretariat's death, Swerczek weighed the heart of Secretariat's rival Sham, discovered it to be 18lb, and decided that Secretariat's had been a whopping 22lb. If there is anything in the ‘X factor' theory, which argues that the large heart gene resides on the X chromosome that a father passes on only to daughters,
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it may explain why Secretariat, a moderately successful sire of male offspring, was a very successful sire of females.

Dubai Millennium (b. 1996)

Eclipse – Pot8os – Waxy – Whalebone – Sir Hercules – Birdcatcher – The Baron – Stockwell – Doncaster – Bend Or – Bona Vista – Cyllene – Polymelus – Phalaris – Sickle – Unbreakable – Polynesian – Native Dancer – Raise a Native – Mr Prospector – Seeking the Gold – Dubai Millennium

Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum and his relatives from the Dubai royal family arrived on the international racing scene in the late 1970s. Flush with oil money, they raised still further the heat in the American sales rings. Some of the deals were staggering, and they illustrated how bloodstock was a pursuit only for those who could afford to take huge, scary gambles. In 1983, Sheikh Mohammed
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paid a world record $10.2 million to outbid Coolmore, as well as the American partnership of trainer D. Wayne Lukas and self-made tycoon Eugene Klein, for a Northern Dancer colt. The colt, Snaafi Dancer, was shipped over the Atlantic to the stables of John Dunlop in Sussex. Dunlop soon discovered that Snaafi Dancer was too slow to race; ‘A nice little horse but no bloody good' was his summary. So Snaafi Dancer, who at least boasted a pedigree that might appeal to breeders, went to stud. He
was infertile. Goodbye $10.2 million, plus training and stabling fees. Two years later, Coolmore broke the Snaafi Dancer record by paying $13.1 million for Seattle Dancer, a son of Nijinsky. While Seattle Dancer earned some money on the racecourse, he did so only to the tune of about £100, 000, and while he was fertile he was nevertheless a moderate stallion.
of the 2000 King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes (in which he had evoked memories of Nijinsky by overtaking the field in a canter). Montjeu was in the ownership of Sheikh Mohammed's great rivals Coolmore, and soon after the Ascot race the Coolmore team challenged Dubai Millennium to come to Ireland, to race against Montjeu in the Irish Champion Stakes. Sheikh Mohammed responded by issuing a counter-challenge, through the
Racing Post
: an old-fashioned match, one on one, $6 million staked by each side. It would have been an early candidate for race of the century, but it was not to be. On the day that the
Post
carried the story, Dubai Millennium broke a leg on the Newmarket gallops, and, after a life-saving operation, retired to stud. He had covered only one book of mares when he contracted grass sickness, an often fatal condition that destroys a horse's nerve endings. He did not survive.

No doubt Coolmore was bitterly disappointed by this setback, as Sheikh Mohammed had been by the Snaafi Dancer debacle. But they both know that failure is the norm, and that if their judgement is sound – they employ some of the best judges of horseflesh in the business – they will find the rare Thoroughbreds that compensate for the rest. At about the time it bought Seattle Dancer, Coolmore was advertising a young stallion, Sadler's Wells. In spring 2008, Sadler's Wells (another son of Northern Dancer) retired, having broken the record of Eclipse's rival Highflyer to become champion sire fourteen times. If you own Sadler's Wells, you can afford quite a few Seattle Dancers.

Sheikh Mohammed set up his own training operation, Godolphin (named in tribute to the Godolphin Arabian), in 1994. (The overall name of the sheikh's racing empire, Darley Racing, pays tribute to another of the foundation sires, the Darley Arabian – Eclipse's great-great-grandfather. The sheikh's breeding operation is the Darley Stud.) Two years later, he inaugurated the world's richest horse race, the Dubai World Cup, which now has a purse of $6 million. Racing, and other sports including golf and powerboat racing, have been key elements in the sheikh's promotion of Dubai as a glamorous destination for tourism and business. The country's capital is the fastest growing city on the planet.

Dubai Millennium was supposed to be the supreme racing exemplar of Sheikh Mohammed's ambitions. According to the bloodstock writer Rachel Pagones, Sheikh Mohammed ‘spent hours alone with Dubai Millennium, going into the colt's box after evening stables to feed him carrots, stroke his shining, sunwarmed coat and simply sit'. Originally called Yaazer, Dubai
Millennium had taken on the burden of high expectation on the day that his trainer told the sheikh that this was the best horse he had ever trained, and got the response, ‘In that case I will change his name.'

The colt's new name signified his obvious target as the 2000 running of the Dubai World Cup; but before that, his first big challenge was the 1999 Derby, a race no horse carrying Sheikh Mohammed's colours had won.
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It went badly. Dubai Millennium, ridden by Frankie Dettori,
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got worked up in the paddock, pulled too hard, was a spent force by the time the field rounded Tattenham Corner, and finished ninth.

Sent back to trips of a mile, he won three races in a row, climaxing with the Queen Elizabeth II Stakes at Ascot, after which Sheikh Mohammed declared him to be ‘the best we have had in Godolphin'. Proving that he had read the script, Dubai Millennium turned up for the World Cup the following March 2000, in stupendous form, pulverizing the field to win by six lengths in record time. ‘It is the greatest race in my life, ' Sheikh Mohammed said.

Dubai Millennium's next race was at Royal Ascot, where his most dangerous opponent was the French champion Sendawar, owned by the Aga Khan. Sendawar was a very good horse, but the betting market made an insulting mistake in promoting him to favouritism. It was like Bucephalus taking on Eclipse, or Sham taking on Secretariat: Sendawar tried to keep up with Dubai Millennium, was broken, and fell away, leaving Dubai Millennium to win by eight lengths.

Now the racing world wanted to see him face another superstar: Montjeu, winner of the 1999 Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe andof the 2000 King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes (in which he had evoked memories of Nijinsky by overtaking the field in a canter). Montjeu was in the ownership of Sheikh Mohammed's great rivals Coolmore, and soon after the Ascot race the Coolmore team challenged Dubai Millennium to come to Ireland, to race against Montjeu in the Irish Champion Stakes. Sheikh Mohammed responded by issuing a counter-challenge, through the Racing Post: an old-fashioned match, one on one, $6 million staked by each side. It would have been an early candidate for race of the century, but it was not to be. On the day that the Post carried the story, Dubai Millennium broke a leg on the Newmarket gallops, and, after a life-saving operation, retired to stud. He had covered only one book of mares when he contracted grass sickness, an often fatal condition that destroys a horse's nerve endings. He did not survive.

Dubai Millennium's career marked the high point of Sheikh Mohammed's horseracing fortunes. In the first years of this century, Coolmore has gained the upper hand. The Ballydoyle racehorses – now in the care of the boyish-looking, softly spoken Aidan O'Brien (no relation of Vincent) – are dominating Europe's most prestigious races, and the ‘Coolmore Mafia' are colonizing the winners' enclosures that had been the regular haunts of the sheikh's Godolphin team. O'Brien seems to produce champions from a conveyor belt.
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In breeding, the superiority is even more marked. The leading four sires in Europe in 2007 were all Coolmore's, while the sires from Sheikh Mohammed's Darley Stud were off the pace. Meanwhile, relations between the two operations, for reasons that have been kept extraordinarily well hidden, have broken down, and the rivals have returned to slugging it out in the sales ring.
Their competing bids pushed up the price of a two-year-old colt, to whom Coolmore later gave the unflattering name The Green Monkey,
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to $16 million – another world record – while Darley paid $9.7 million for Jalil, a son of leading sire Storm Cat. Both colts conformed to what one might call the Snaafi Dancer syndrome, failing to live up to their valuations.

In the bloodstock world recently, then, it has been John Magnier first, Sheikh Mohammed nowhere, and you get the impression that the sheikh does not find that result acceptable. Recently, he has switched tactics, buying as stallion prospects colts with proven form, such as the 2007 Derby winner Authorized. In 2007, he spent at least $200 million on bloodstock, and he went on to splash out a further $420 million on the Woodlands Stud, the largest stud farm in Australia. Magnier, notwithstanding his estimated personal fortune of £1.3 billion, would be pushed to match those sums.

More than two hundred years after Eclipse's death, the battle to secure the best bloodstock – which one might characterize as the battle over Eclipse's legacy – involves huge egos, business ruthlessness, and national pride. As I said, Dennis O'Kelly was there first.

Anatomical drawings of Eclipse from Charles Vial de Sainbel's
An Essay on the Proportions of the Celebrated Eclipse
– the work that helped Sainbel to set up the Royal Veterinary College.