The Rail Bookshelf: 'Eclipse' - NYTimes.com An excerpt from Chapter 6: The Young Thoroughbred of "Eclipse: the Story of the Rogue, the Madam and the Horse That Changed Racing." It was not obvious what qualities William Wildman, who bought Eclipse at the dispersal sale of the late Duke of Cumberland, saw in the horse. Eclipse was leggy, and possessed, experts thought, an ugly head. His croup - the highest point of his hind quarters - was as high as or higher than his withers, a characteristic that was reckoned to be undesirable in a racer. He was "thick-winded," breathing at disconcerting volume as he exercised. And his pedigree seemed to be no more distinguished than his appearance. Marske, his sire, was worth only 26 guineas and had been covering mares at the derisory fee of half a guinea. Moreover, Eclipse was bad-tempered and unruly, so much so that his handlers at Wildman's stables at Mickleham considered gelding him. But the Mickleham team had time on their side. Eclipse and his contemporaries belonged to the last generation of racers who were not expected to see a racecourse until they were 4 or 5 years old. The tests they faced demanded physical maturity. Races were over two, three or more commonly four miles, and many events involved heats. Horses might have to run, in a single afternoon, four races of four miles each, with only half-hour intervals in which to get their breath back. To emerge triumphant at the end of that, they had to call on great reserves of courage and stamina - what the Georgians admiringly called "bottom." During the winter and spring of 1768 and 1769, as Eclipse enters his fifth year, he begins to be subjected to an ever harsher training regime. He spends his nights, and the portions of each day when he is not at exercise, in an enclosed, windowless, heated stable. It is warm in winter and suffocating in summer, and he wears thick rugs. Sweating is good, believe the early trainers, who regularly turn up the heating and subject the horses, rugged and hooded, to saunas. As the racing season approaches, Eclipse is given purgatives, consisting of aloes or mercury. Eclipse has his own "boy," or groom, John Oakley, who sleeps in lodgings above the stable. Oakley gets up at about four each morning, sometimes earlier. After a breakfast of porridge, with perhaps cold meat from the previous day as well as cheese, bread and beer, he mucks out the stable, removes Eclipse's rugs and rubs him down, gives him a breakfast of oats, clothes him again, puts on his saddle and bridle, and mounts him. The pair then join the rest of the string for morning exercise on the Downs. Once on the Downs, Oakley and Eclipse start off at an easy gallop. After half a mile or so they come to an incline, and Oakley begins to urge Eclipse to go faster. They race uphill for another half mile before Oakley pulls on the reins. They walk back, and Eclipse gets a moderate drink of water - the Georgians do not believe that horses should be allowed very much refreshment. They gallop gently again, and then walk. Then they have another fast gallop, and then another walk. All this while, Eclipse has been burdened by heavy rugs. Every week or ten days, he wears this clothing on a "sweat," a gallop of four miles or more. But even on less grueling days, he is sweaty enough. At about nine o'clock, they return to the stables. Oakley leads him back to his stall, ties him up, rubs down his legs with straw, removes his rugs, and brushes and "curries" him (with a metal currycomb). He clothes the horse again and gives him some more oats or hay. The stables are then shut up. From now until mid-afternoon, Oakley and the other boys have time off. They play gambling games, many of them now obscure: fives, spell, null, marbles, chuck-farthing, spinning tops and holes. At 4 o'clock, they return to the stables and take the horses for another round of exercise. Then there is more rubbing down, brushing and combing; feeding, of horses and boys; preparing the horses" beds. The stables are shut up, with horses and boys inside, at nine. It is not surprising that early racing paintings show animals that are etiolated and apparently long in the back: they are trained until every ounce of "condition" - spare flesh - is sweated away. Most racehorses continued to be trained in this fashion until well into the 19th century. Yet Eclipse thrives. He has an unusual way of galloping: he carries his head low, and he spreads out his hind legs to such an extent that, one observer said later, a wheelbarrow might have been driven through them. Even so, he eats up the ground. Eclipse is the most brilliant representative to date of a new type of running horse, the fastest the world has ever seen: the thoroughbred. During the previous half a century, some mysterious alchemy had been taking place in the breeding sheds of England. The horses that were emerging were blessed with an unprecedentedly potent combination of speed and stamina. How these qualities came about is the subject of much debate, hampered (though not dampened) by the haphazard standards of early record keeping. If you want to take a patriarchal view, you can give the credit to about two hundred Eastern stallions who were imported by breeders during the Restoration and the early years of the 18th century, and in particular to the three stallions from whom every contemporary thoroughbred descends in the male line: the Byerley Turk, the Darley Arabian and the Godolphin Arabian. But the mares were, of course, half of the equation, too; and, as is so often the case with females in history, they are more obscure. At the end of the bottom, maternal line of Eclipse's pedigree is a mysterious "Royal mare." What we do know is that the thoroughbred, this cross of Eastern stallions with English mares, transcended its parentage. Eclipse became the horse who, in his own time and ever since, represented the thoroughbred's abilities in excelsis.