On Cusp of History, Remembering One of the Greats Who is the greatest racehorse of all time? It is a fruitless but enjoyable debate. In America, you might argue for the pre-eminence of Lexington in the 19th century, and Secretariat in the 20th. Many of us in Europe would nominate St Simon (1881-1908) and Sea Bird II (1962-1973) from those centuries; we might also suggest that our current champion, Frankel, has the potential to join these ranks. But if superiority over contemporaries, enduring fame and influence on the breed are measures, no horse has surpassed Eclipse (1764-1789). In his two seasons on the racetrack (1769 and 1770), Eclipse won all of his 18 races, by wide margins or walkovers. "He was never beaten, never had a whip flourished over him, or felt the tickling of a spur, or was ever, for a moment, distressed by the speed of a competitor," one contemporary wrote. Though never a champion sire, he became the root of a male line from which descend 95 percent of contemporary thoroughbreds, among them I'll Have Another and indeed every horse bar one that ran in this year's Kentucky Derby. And, of course, because his male line is so predominant, he is present in every thoroughbred's pedigree, many times over. His influence does not end there. A French veterinarian, Charles Vial de Sainbel, anatomized him, and with his Essay on the Proportions on the Celebrated Eclipse gained the reputation that enabled him to establish what became the Royal Veterinary College. Today, the main building of the college is the Eclipse building; a small library there houses the great horse's skeleton, a portrait of him by George Stubbs and a first edition of Sainbel's work. Eclipse's name endures, too, in many other contexts, like the Eclipse Awards, the Oscars of the racing world. A racing fan, I was familiar with the name Eclipse, and I had heard of Dennis O'Kelly and his prediction, "Eclipse first, and the rest nowhere." But it was when I read a passage on the Eclipse story in Glenye Cain's "The Home Run Horse," an entertaining study of the breeding industry, that I realized I wanted to write this story. Cain described how Eclipse was - as you would have expected of the supreme exemplar of the Sport of Kings in the 18th century - bred by a royal prince, the Duke of Cumberland. But Cumberland died, and Eclipse fell into the much more unlikely ownership of O'Kelly, an Irish gambler and rogue. More unlikely still, O'Kelly's companion Charlotte Hayes was a brothel madam - albeit one with a classy address, near St James's Palace. Every other leading owner of their day was, if not titled, at least a member of the landed gentry; and here were O'Kelly and Hayes, whose wealth came from gambling and sex, and who possessed the most celebrated racehorse in England. Horses, class, and sex: an irresistible combination, I thought. I write this as racing's fans wait to see whether I'll Have Another can become the first horse since Affirmed in 1978 to win the Triple Crown. We're interested in the result of the Belmont Stakes not only as a potential sporting achievement but also because it has a historical resonance, linking contemporary racers to Affirmed, Seattle Slew, Secretariat and the eight previous Triple Crown winners. Other sports have rich heritages, but none displays them as vividly as horse racing, in which every champion is a living reminder of champions of earlier generations. I'll Have Another, for example, is a descendant in the fifth generation of Nijinsky, the last horse to win the Triple Crown in England. Go back further, just through his sire's line, and you find such greats as Raise a Native (b 1950), Bend Or (b 1877), and Whalebone (b 1807), until, 23 generations away, you find a chestnut colt with a white blaze - "whose excellence in speed, blood, pedigree, and progeny, will be, perhaps, transmitted to the end of time."