Eclipse’s relics

[parlo]

A gilden Eclipse’s foot should have been presented as a "Challenge Prize" in a race run annually at Ascot from 1832 onwards:

http://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/cgi-bi … 90822.2.82

Is this story true? What happened with that trophy? What’s about Eclipse’s skeleton shown at the Horceracing Museum at Newmarket – has it only 3 feet?

[Crepello1957]

Think the skeleton in Newmarket is Hyperion. Isn’t Eclipse in the Natural History Museum in London.
Think all four feet are missing.

[Tonge]

Eclipse’s skeleton is at the Royal Veterinary College in London (though it was loaned to the Horseracing Museum for a time when it first opened). There is some doubt about its authenticity and suggestions that it may include bones from other horses, fuelled by the existence of at least 5 contemporary hooves of Eclipse!

[parlo]

Thanks for replies!

Hasn’t there been DNA-tests on the skeleton of Eclipse recently? (Concerning the C/T-gene-combination which should have some meaning on the genetical preposition of a sprinter/miler/stayer-type of a horse.)

So a skeleton composed by relics of different individuals should have been discovered.

Questions over questions ….

[Nickc]

The Eclipse hoof that was run for at Newmarket is in the Jockey Club rooms, along with a Stubbs portrait and a whip said to contain hair from Eclipse’s mane.

The skeleton is in the Eclipse building at the Royal Veterinary College in Hatfield, Herts. Mim Bower and a team of researchers from Cambridge University concluded that the skeleton was genuine, but that Eclipse came from a different family from the one recorded in the Stud Book.

Nicholas Clee, author of

Eclipse: The Story of the Rogue, the Madam and the Horse That Changed Racing

.

[parlo]

Thank you very much! I’ll try to find this book.

[Author]

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