galileo.

​Was there ever a Galileo colt named Galileo Galilei, the full name of the Italian astronomer, mathematician and natural philosopher? If not, there should be, as in their very different worlds, time and species, Galileo the human and Galileo the thoroughbred racehorse, were both revolutionary and without peer in their fields of endeavour.
Galileo Galilei is best known for his run-in with the Catholic Church for daring to suggest the truth of the Copernican system with the Sun at its centre, with the planets, including the Earth, in rotation around it. For his sin, he lived the rest of his life under house arrest. Similarly, though as reward not as punishment, Galileo lived his life after his racecourse exploits, in one place, namely Coolmore.
Both Galileo human and equine etched their names into the history and immortality of their fields and neither will ever be forgotten.
Galileo, the horse, is undoubtedly, in my mind, the greatest thoroughbred in horse racing history, eclipsing even the mighty Eclipse, the horse, born in 1769, claimed by most thoroughbred breeding experts as the most influential stallion in the history of the sport. In Nicholas Clee’s most excellent biography of the legendary horse, the opening paragraph is thus: ‘Go to the races, anywhere in the world, and you’ll be watching horses who are relatives of Eclipse. The vast majority of them are descended from Eclipse’s male line; if you trace back their ancestry through their fathers, their father’s fathers and so on, you come, some twenty generations back, to him. He is the most influential stallion in the history of the Thoroughbred. Two and a half centuries after his imperious, undefeated career, he remains the undisputed paragon of the sport’.
This claim can now be disputed. In time, Galileo will first challenge the status of Eclipse in world breeding history and, ultimately, he will claim his crown. It is as inevitable as one day in the distant future the Earth will be destroyed by the heat of the Sun.
Actually, Galileo has already outshone Eclipse. Eclipse never sired a horse better than himself. Galileo is the sire of Frankel, the son destined to keep the champion sires’ crown in the family – first Sadlers’ Wells, then his son Galileo, then his son Frankel. And already Frankel is breeding Derby winners, even if his father has five to his name, a record, with three generations on the ground to enhance the number.
It is interesting that the very top stallions these days command huge covering fees and can earn their owners far greater wealth than could ever be achieved on the racecourse. No wonder these colts are retired prematurely, as racing enthusiasts would claim. The highest fee earned by Eclipse was fifty-guineas, the equivalent of six-thousand pounds today. No one knows, outside of Coolmore and the breeders with the wherewithal to pay the bill, what the covering fee of Galileo was. Montjeu stood at a fee of £125,000 and his reputation, as high as it was, is only in the foothills of the reputation and record of his father.
As wealthy and overwhelmingly successful as Coolmore are, the sadness around the operation at the moment, and it will not be collective crocodile tears brought on by the knowledge that they have lost their greatest financial asset, will be the realisation that they will never again have on the roster a horse as irreplaceable as Galileo. For all the offspring that he has sired that have gone on to win classics all around the world, colts and fillies that topped the end of season handicaps at all ages and in multiple distance categories, only Juddmonte have bred to Galileo and achieved a racehorse better than the father on the racecourse. Frankel is Galileo’s champion of champions and he will never reside at Coolmore.
Ed Chamberlain, and he is due praise for recognising the significance of the moment, on I.T.V. Racing had the presence of mind to remind viewers that Galileo’s death was a sad and momentous day for the sport and by interspersing its coverage of one of flat racing’s best Saturdays of racing with comments on the great horse’s passing, no one was left in any doubt of Galileo’s place in racing’s equine hierarchy. 
I have no doubt Galileo will not leave Coolmore and that his eternal resting place will be capped by a magnificent statue, even if the eulogy cannot possibly do his greatness true justice.
It was no mere horse that passed out of this world last Saturday but a legend, not a horse of a life-time but a horse for all-time.