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 furlongsto 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 withoutdefeat. 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.166 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.167
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, 168 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 importantrace 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.
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 1966.169 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 breathas 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. Herecommended the colt to Charles Engelhard, a jowly industrialist who was one of the leading racehorse owners of the time.170
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.171 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.172 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 agood 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, ’ Piggottsaid, ‘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, 173 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.174 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.175
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.176
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.
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