Horse Racing in Britain and Ireland by Anne Holland

Author:Anne Holland
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Horse Racing: In Britain and Ireland
ISBN: 9781784420031
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2019-11-28T00:00:00+00:00

Arkle, taken by the author as a teenager with her Brownie camera.

The skeleton of Eclipse is displayed in the National Horseracing Museum in Newmarket (on loan from the Royal Veterinary College). It was found that his heart weighed 14lb, about double the average at that time.

NATIONAL HUNT HORSES

ARKLE

For most people, including the author, Arkle stands head and shoulders above the rest when it comes to steeplechasers. That is not to say there won’t be some devotees of Golden Miller (five Cheltenham Gold Cups), Prince Regent and Arkle’s own stable companion, Flyingbolt, but it is Arkle who remains at the top of the NH ratings. Not much was thought of him at first, but as he matured so he turned into a magical racehorse with a character to match.

He forced a change in the handicapping rules in both Ireland and the UK, whereby two handicaps were drawn up for a race in which a horse like Arkle was so far ahead of the rest; one list was for if he ran, with the other entries lumped near the bottom weight. Should the top weight not declare, however, the original list would result in an almost level, low-weighted race, so the second list came into effect, allotting weights across the spectrum for the remaining horses.

Arkle himself defied huge weights and all bar twice still won; his two other defeats came when he slipped badly in his first Hennessy against Mill House, and when he broke his pedal bone in the King George VI chase at Kempton Park in what turned out to be his last race.

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