Run annually over a mile and a quarter at Sandown Park in Esher, Surrey in early July, the Eclipse Stakes is a Group 1 contest open to horses aged three years and upwards. Indeed, Eclipse Stakes provides the first opportunity for three-year-olds of the ‘Classic’ generation to meet older rivals at the highest level, so it follows that it is one of the major middle-distance races of the European Flat racing season. Established in 1886, the race is named after the prolific racehorse Eclipse, who retired unbeaten after 18 starts, many of them walkovers, in 1770 and subsequently became one of the most influential stallions in bloodstock history.
As far as the most successful trainers in the history of the Eclipse Stakes are concerned, at the time of writing, three men jointly hold the record with six wins apiece. The first of them was twelve-time champion trainer Alec Taylor Jnr., a.k.a. the ‘Wizard of Manton’, who saddled Bayardo (1909), Lemberg (1910), Buchan (1919, 1920), Craig an Eran (1921) and Saltash (1923; Lemberg, the 1910 Derby winner, dead-heated with old rival Neil Gow, who had beaten him a short-head in the 2,000 Guineas.
More recently, ten-time champion trainer Sir Michael Stoute saddled his first Eclipse Stakes winner, Opera House, in 1993, but has since added Ezzoud (1994), Pilsudski (1997), Medicean (2001), Notnowcato (2007) and Ulysses (2017) to his winning tally. Pilsudski, who won the Breeders’ Cup as as three-year-old, twice finished second in the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe and won the Japan Cup on his final start, as a five-year-old, was probably the best known of the sextet, although Ulysses also won the Juddmonte International Stakes and finished third in the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe.
More recently still, Aidan O’Brien – who didn’t start his training career until 1993, 21 years after Sir Michael Stoute – has saddled Giant’s Causeway (2000), Hawk Wing (2002), Oratorio (2005), Mount Nelson (2008), So You Think (2011) and St. Mark’s Basilica (2021) to victory at Sandown Park. At the time of writing, his St. James’s Palace Stakes winner, Paddington, is 11/4 second favourite for the 2023 renewal of the Eclipse Stakes, so it may not be long before he becomes the most successful trainer outright.