| Featured Article - May
2006
In The Shadow of Equus The Greatness of Averageness
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| What
makes a racehorse great? Being average, that’s what. In the annuls of horse racing, the legendary 18th century horse, Eclipse, is considered to be the greatest racehorse of all time. He was the “father of modern racehorses,” and his bloodline contributed to 80 percent of today’s Thoroughbred horses on the track. He won all eighteen races he was entered into before he was retired to the breeding farm in 1771, mainly because no one wanted to race their horses against him. But despite his racing brilliance, and all the folklore and mythology that get attached to unbeatable racehorses, veterinary scientists have recently learned that Eclipse was perfectly average. As far as his legs were concerned anyway. Eclipse was a chestnut colt sired by Marske and out of a Regulus mare called Spiletta. He was the great-great-grandson of the Darley Arabian, one of the three founding stallions of the Thoroughbred breed. Eclipse was born in 1764 at the Cranbourne Lodge Stud, owned by HRH Duke of Cumberland. His birth came during a total eclipse of the sun, hence the name. A year later, the Duke died and Eclipse was auctioned for sale. By the time he was a four-year-old, he was owned by Col. Dennis O’Kelly. His amazing talent for speed and endurance emerged early. He wasn’t the easiest of horses to manage, the rumour of the day being that he was highly strung and boisterous. According to the old stories, his best friend was a parrot that would rattle off psalms, popular songs, and quite likely a few other chosen minuets. His jockey was John Oakley, who rode him to victory in his first race as a five-year-old in 1769. He literally ran away with the fifty-pound purse, the launch of the Colonel’s fortunes, causing him to utter his immortal one-liner, “Eclipse first, the rest nowhere!” |
Eclipse’s
offspring became legends in their own right. He threw big foals and
Derby winners — Saltram, Young Eclipse, and Serjeant. His sons became
top sires too: Volunteer sired Derby winner Spread Eagle, Pot-8-Os and
leading stallion, King Fergus. But one horse, his grandson
“Copenhagen,” didn’t win fame at the track, but at the battlefield — he
was the Duke of Wellington’s charger at the Battle of Waterloo. Eclipse died of colic at the age of 25 in 1789. His story was so significant to the racing world that his remains were not buried, but dissected to find out what made him so exceptional. His large heart and powerful lungs, seen immediately at dissection, played a pivotal role, but it wasn’t until his skeleton (which has been on display at the National Horseracing Museum in Newmarket, UK for decades) was analyzed more closely by scientists at the Royal Veterinary College, in London, UK, that they found one of the secrets to his success. Using portraits of Eclipse, reconstructing one of his legs, studying his skeletal framework, and developing computer models of horse movements in all gaits, they found that Eclipse’s body shape and movement put him smack in the middle of normal range, making him the perfect average. Averageness gave him the absolute conformation for running. But, as everyone who has worked with horses knows, physical attributes are only part of the equation. At the heart of it all is spirit, the will to run, the desire to race ahead of the group. It’s just that Eclipse did it so consistently and with so much ease. It would seem, in over 200 years of breeding and nicking, the ingredients for a winner haven’t changed much, and the old heads at the track aren’t too far off the mark when they can pick a winner just by looking at the horse. Read Margaret Evans' column "In The Shadow Of Equus" each month in Pacific & Prairie Horse Journal
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