Eclipse (42 page)

If Sedbury, not Regulus, were the sire of Eclipse's dam Spilletta, the Godolphin Arabian would disappear from Eclipse's pedigree. The number of strains of the Godolphin Arabian in contemporary Thoroughbreds would be greatly reduced; and the number of strains of the Byerley Turk would be greatly increased. Regulus was the Godolphin Arabian's son; Sedbury was
the Byerley Turk's great-grandson. Sedbury was also a descendant of the Helmsley Turk, an important early sire but one who does not appear in Eclipse's official pedigree. However, I am inclined to believe that Spilletta's sire's name changed from Sedbury to Regulus in the early records as a result of proper correction.

I have doubts, though, about Eclipse's damsire, for reasons stated above. The inclusion of the Scarborough Colt in place of Easby Snake in the pedigree would introduce to it a new name, the Thoulouse Barb. He was the Scarborough Colt's tail male grandfather, and had been imported at the end of the seventeenth century by a Cumberland breeder, Henry Curwen, who had bought him from Louis XIV. The Scarborough Colt was also a descendant – as Easby Snake was not – of Old Bald Peg.

Conclusion

Pedigrees of early racehorses are full of question marks, dead ends and questionable attributions. The names – exotic, homely and bizarre – tantalize. Behind them lie histories that are only fragmentarily apparent. We want to know more about them.

Nothing that we may discover has implications for Eclipse's reputation. Eclipse is Eclipse.

¹⁹⁶
Quoted in Theodore Cook's
Eclipse and O'Kelly
.

Bay
A coppery brown – the most common colour in Thoroughbreds. Other Thoroughbred colours include black, brown (the distinction between black and brown is often fine), chestnut, grey, and roan (grey hairs with a base of a darker colour).

Betting post
Where betting transactions took place on a racecourse before the introduction of betting rings. Bets were struck between individuals rather than, as later, between backers and bookmakers.

Black type
Victory or a placing in a
Pattern
or Listed race will show in black (bold) type in sales catalogues. It is a valuable qualification for horses seeking a career at stud.

Blackleg
A gambler, usually dishonest.

Blinkers
A hood with eye-cups that reduces a horse's range of vision. Some horses need them to concentrate. A visor has slits in the cups, allowing a slightly better view.

Breeze-up
A sale at which prospective purchasers can watch horses go through their paces.

Broodmare
A mare employed for breeding.

By/out of
A foal is ‘by' its sire, and ‘out of' its dam.

Claimer
After a claiming race, any runner may be claimed for an advertised sum or more. This sum is reduced if the owner runs the horse with less weight.

Colt
A male horse, younger than five.

Conformation
The shape and build of a horse.

Cover
To impregnate a mare.

Damsire
The sire (father) of a dam (mother), or maternal grandfather.

Distance
240 yards. In Eclipse's day, a horse who had not passed the distance post by the time the winner had passed the finishing post was ‘distanced'.

Do a tap
A jockey dismounting from a horse who has run badly might say, ‘He didn't do a tap. 'The horse never got going properly.

Dotted up
Won easily. Other favourite expressions include ‘bolted up', ‘hacked up', ‘sluiced up', ‘won doing handsprings', and ‘won with his/her head in his/her chest'.

Each way
Two bets: one that the horse will win, the other that the horse will be placed. A £1 each way bet costs £2.To be ‘placed' means to finish first or second in races with five to seven runners (but only to finish first in races with four runners or fewer); first, second or third in races with eight to fifteen runners; and first, second, third or fourth in handicaps with sixteen runners or more. The odds with bookmakers are a fifth or (in most handicaps) a quarter of the win odds. Say you place £1 each way on a 10-1 shot in a handicap. The horse wins: you get £10 plus £2.50 (the place return, a quarter of the win return) plus your £2 stake – £14.50.The horse is placed: you get £2.50 plus the £1 of your stake that was the place bet – £3.50.

Exchange
A betting exchange is an online version of a betting post: a place where layers and backers find each other to strike individual bets. Exchanges such as Betfair are controversial: critics say that they encourage corruption, allowing people to
lay
horses that they know will not win, or that they have the means of stopping from winning. The earliest indication that a horse is injured before a big race is often when the horse's exchange price lengthens.

Exposed
An exposed horse has shown how good he or she is – the implication being, not good enough to win today's race. An unexposed horse may be about to show form in advance of any previously revealed.

Family
A horse's ancestors in the
tail female
line. A horse's half brother or half sister has the same mother; having the same sire does not make horses half siblings.

Filly
A female horse, younger than five.

Fizzy
A fizzy horse is in an excitable state, or inclined to get that way. Also ‘buzzy'.

Furlong
One-eighth of a mile: 220 yards.

Gelding
A castrated male horse. Temperamental horses who are unlikely to become stallions but who might be good racers usually get this treatment; most male horses who race at the age of six and above are gelded. In 2003, the gelding Funny Cide won the Kentucky Derby. Geldings are ineligible for the Epsom Derby.

Giving, receiving
It is better to receive than to give. Receiving weight from a rival or rivals means carrying less; giving means carrying more.

Going
The state of the ground. On British turf courses, the going descriptions are, in descending order of hardness: hard (a word that clerks of the course use rarely), firm, good to firm, good, good to soft (‘soft' is ‘yielding' in Ireland), soft, and heavy. It is said of some racehorses that they ‘go on any ground', but most have preferences. Horses with economical, daisy-cutter actions usually prefer ground that is fast (on the firm side); those who bend their knees and pound the turf go better on, or perhaps are less disadvantaged by, slow, soft ground.

Greek
Same as
blackleg
.

Hand
Four inches, a unit of measurement of a horse's height. The measurement is from the ground to the withers – the top of a horse's shoulders. Eclipse is generally agreed to have been about 15.3 hands, which was a good height in the mid-eighteenth century but modest by the standards of Thoroughbreds today.

Handicap
A race in which horses carry weights according to ratings allotted by the official handicapper. In theory, they should finish in a dead heat. An example from a handy copy of the
Racing Post
: a five-furlong handicap at Lingfield in which horses rated 72 to 83 took part, won by the 78-rated Zowington. He carried 8st 13lb. A filly called Ocean Blaze finished second; she was rated 76, and therefore carried 2lb less, 8st 11lb.

Handicapper
In Britain, the official handicappers work for the British Horseracing Authority, and assign ratings that dictate the weights horses will carry in handicap races. If a horse is a handicapper, he or she specializes in this type of race, not being good enough to run in
Pattern
(Group) or Listed races. In the US, handicappers are racing enthusiasts who study form.

Horse
Apart from the obvious, generic definition, the term implies an ungelded male of five years old and above.

Jockey
Before it came exclusively to mean ‘rider', jockey was a generic term for a racing man.

Lay
To lay a horse is to accept the bet of someone backing it. Bookmakers are ‘layers'.

Lead (leg)
The leg that advances further. (In horses, the side of the lead foreleg and lead rear leg is usually the same.) The other one hits the ground first. A horse may ‘change legs' (switching lead legs) while galloping, sometimes when feeling uncomfortable on the ground. Turning left, a horse should lead with the left foreleg; turning right, with the right. A horse turning left but on a right lead is on the ‘wrong' leg.

Let down
A horse that will not ‘let himself down' is reluctant to gallop properly, perhaps because he finds the ground too hard, or too soft.

Maiden
A horse who has not won a race. Or a race for horses who have not yet won a race.

Mare
A female horse of five years old and above.

Missed out
‘He missed out the open ditch. 'This expression, which a steeplechase jockey might use, does not mean that the horse ran around the fence to avoid jumping it (a manoeuvre that would result in disqualification), but that he jumped it clumsily.

Nap
A tipster's strongest recommendation.

Near/off side
A horse's near side is the left; the off side is the right. A rider mounts and dismounts on the near side. Eclipse's white stocking was on his off hind leg.

Nick
In breeding, a cross – of, for example, Eclipse with Herod mares, or Eclipse sons or daughters with Herod daughters or sons – that regularly produces good racers.

Nursery
A
handicap
for two-year-olds.

Off/not off
Primed, or not, to run to full potential.

On the bridle (or bit)/off the bridle (or bit)
A horse on the bridle is coasting along, without effort from the jockey; when the horse is off the bridle, the jockey is working away.

Out of the handicap
The top weight in the Grand National carries 11st 10lb; the lowest weight a horse can carry in the race is 10st. Let us say that the top weight has a handicap rating of 165. A horse with 10st on his back
would, in theory, have a rating of 141 – 24lb (1st 10lb) lower. But what of a horse rated 135? He also carries 10st, but should, to have a chance against the others, carry 9st 8lb. He is ‘out of the handicap'.

Pattern
The ‘Pattern' of racing was introduced in the early 1970s. Pattern races are the most prestigious contests, ranked Group 1, Group 2 and Group 3.Winning or placed form in these races, and in the Listed races that follow them in prestige, shows in
black type
in form guides and sales catalogues.
Pinhooking
Buying foals with the aim of selling them on as yearlings.

Rough off
To give a horse a holiday from training.

Rubbing-house
Where horses in Eclipse's era were saddled, and where they were rubbed down after races or between heats.

Seller
After a selling race, the winner is sold at auction, and other runners may also be bought.

Stud
A stallion; more commonly, a farm with horses for breeding. A stud may house broodmares only.

Stuffy
A stuffy horse needs lots of exercise to get fit.

Tail male, tail female
Respectively, the top and bottom lines in pedigrees. The top line ascends through the sire to his sire (the grandsire), and through the grandsire's sire, and so on; the bottom line ascends through the dam to her dam (the granddam), and through the granddam's dam, and so on.

Thoroughbred
A horse whose breeding satisfies the criteria of compilers of stud books.

Tote
The Tote runs the Totalisator, a pool betting system known in France and the US as the Pari-mutuel. The UK and Ireland are unusual among racing countries in having a tote as well as bookmakers. France, the US, and Japan are among the nations with tote monopolies; Australia has bookmakers oncourse; only some states license them elsewhere. The Tote (the company) is state-owned; at the time of writing, plans to sell it are on the shelf.

Books

Eclipse and O'Kelly

Anon.,
The Genuine Memoirs of Dennis O'Kelly, Esq: Commonly Called CountO'Kelly
(C. Stalker, 1788)

Blyth, Henry,
The High Tide of Pleasure: Seven English Rakes
(Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1970)

Church, Michael,
Eclipse: The Horse, the Race, the Awards
(Thoroughbred Advertising, 2000)

Clark, Bracy,
A Short History of the Celebrated Race-horse Eclipse
(London, 1835) Cook, Theodore Andrea,
Eclipse and O'Kelly
(William Heinemann, 1907)

Hall, Sherwin, ‘The Story of a Skeleton: Eclipse' in
Guardians of the Horse: Past, Present and Future
(British Equine Veterinary Association, 1999)

Sainbel, Charles Vial de,
Elements of Veterinary Art: Containing an Essay on the Proportions of the Celebrated Eclipse
(London, 1791) Trew, Cecil G.,
From ‘Dawn' to ‘Eclipse'
(Methuen, 1939)