HorseRacingQA.com

Currently standing at the Aga Khan’s Gilltown Stud, in Co. Kildare, for a stud fee of €150,000, Sea The Stars is rightly billed as ‘One of the all-time greats’. In an exceptional three-year-old campaign, in 2009, Sea The Stars carried all before him, winning all six starts, all at Group 1 level and including the 2,000 Guineas, Derby and Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe.

Timeform described his three-year-old campaign as ‘one of unparalleled, sustained excellence over a variety of trips.’ However, Sea The Stars achieved a Timeform Annual Rating of just 140 which, while the equivalent of that achieved by Shergar and Dancing Brave, among others, is only joint-eighth in the all-time list since Timeform ratings were first published in 1948. The horses rated higher than Sea The Stars in that list are Frankel, Sea-Bird, Brigadier Gerard, Tudor Minstrel, Abernant, Ribot and Mill Reef.

Few would argue that Timeform ratings are as accurate a measure as any of comparing one generation of racehorses with another. However, the ‘problem’ with Sea The Stars, as acknowledged by Timeform, wass that he was too far ahead of the rest of his generation for his own good. Trainer John Oxx said of him, ‘He always won comfortably [never by more than 2½ lengths] and had plenty of gas left as he didn’t exert himself too hard.’ The lack of ‘yardstick’ horses, by which to measure his performance, or any wide-margin victories, ultimately counted against Sea The Stars as far as his Timeform rating was concerned.

The race commonly known as the Coral-Eclipse is a Group One 1 contest open to horses aged three years and upwards and run over a mile and a quarter at Sandown Park in July each year. Since 1976, the race has been sponsored by bookmaker Coral, nowadays owned by Entain plc, formerly GVC Holdings, and is often referred to by its sponsored title.

However, the history of the race dates back to 1886, when it was inaugurated, as the Eclipse Stakes, under the auspices of British banker and thoroughbred racehorse breeder Leopold de Rothschild. Indeed, at the time of its inauguration, the Eclipse Stakes was worth 10,000 sovereigns to the winner, making it the most valuable race ever run in Britain.

The Eclipse Stakes is, indeed, named after a horse. Between May, 1769 and October, 1770, Eclipse won all ten races in which he actually competed, all bar one at odds-on, and another eight by walkover, such that he retired from racing officially unbeaten in 18 starts. Fittingly, the Eclipse Stakes has always attracted horses of the highest calibre; its roll of honour includes such luminaries of the sport as Mill Reef, Brigadier Gerard, Dancing Brave, Sea The Stars and Enable, to name but a handful.