Horse races have thrilled spectators since 5000 BC, when the first nomads staged competitions across the steppes of central Asia. Here are two of the greatest horses to influence the sport and find their way into the history books.
Thoroughbred racing as we know it developed in the 17th and 18th centuries after Europeans discovered the speed and stamina of Bedouin horses during the Crusades. European nobility imported Arabian stallions to breed to their mares, and all of today’s Thoroughbreds can trace their lineage back to three primary stallions from the Middle East: the Darley Arabian, Godolphin Arabian, and Byerley Turk. Perhaps the most famous of those is the Godolphin Arabian.
In 1724, a bay foal named Shami was born in Yemen. He was first presented to the Bey of Tunis (the Tunisian head of state) and then given to King Louis XV of France as a gift. But the French court considered the horse unsuitable for breeding—at just 14.3 hands, he was small, and the trip from Tunis was hard on him. He looked thin and had a dull coat, not what the French considered to be good stock. So in 1729, King Louis sold him to the English horse breeder Edward Cooke.
Cooke also considered Shami inferior, but bred him anyway . . . with the mare Lady Roxanne, who produced a foal named Lath. That horse became England’s greatest racer of the day, winning the Queen’s Plate race at Newmarket nine times. Suddenly, Shami was in demand for stud. The Earl of Godolphin bought him in 1733 and renamed him the Godolphin Arabian. Shami’s foals not only dominated racing in the 18th century, they also became the sires and dams of champions. Even 20th-century track greats like Man o’ War and Seabiscuit had pedigrees that led back to the small Arabian horse from Tunis.
On April 1, 1764, two major events occurred: one was a solar eclipse, and the other was the birth of a colt named Eclipse (in honor of the astronomical event). Eclipse belonged to the English Duke of Cumberland, but when the duke died a year later, the horse was sold to William Wildman, a sheep dealer. Wildman may have worried that he got a bad deal—Eclipse was not only high-strung and hard to handle, the horse also galloped with his nose almost touching the ground.
Despite his problems, Eclipse entered his first race in 1769. It was a race of four separate heats, each a mile long. By the beginning of the second heat, spectator Captain Dennis O’Kelly was so impressed with Eclipse’s stamina that he made one of the world’s most daring (and now famous) bets. In those days, any horse lagging more than 240 yards behind the front-runner was said to be “nowhere.” O’Kelly bet that the race would end with “Eclipse first, and the rest, nowhere.” Eclipse won; his competitors were, in fact, nowhere, and the exuberant O’Kelly bought a half interest in the horse.
Eclipse went on to win every race he entered. He was so fast that after two years no one would bet on any other horse when Eclipse was in the lineup. So he was retired to stud, and today at least 80 percent of racing’s Thoroughbreds (including Canada’s Northern Dancer) are descendants of the great racehorse who left his competition “nowhere.”
For Man o’ War and Secretariat, turn to page 39.
To read about Citation and Ruffian, turn to page 145.