The Eclipse Stakes is a Group 1 flat horse race in Great Britain open to thoroughbreds aged three years or older. It is run at Sandown Park over a distance of 1 mile, 2 furlongs and 7 yards (2,018 metres), and it is scheduled to take place each year in early July.

The event is named after Eclipse, a celebrated 18th-century racehorse. It was established in 1886, and the inaugural running was won by Bendigo. At that time, it was Britain's richest ever race. The prize fund of £10,000 was donated by Leopold de Rothschild at the request of General Owen Williams, a co-founder of Sandown Park.

The Eclipse Stakes was contested by high-quality fields from its inception. It was won by Ayrshire, the previous year's Derby winner, in 1889. The first three finishers in 1903 — Ard Patrick, Sceptre and Rock Sand — had won seven Classics between them.

The race has been sponsored by Coral since 1976, and it is now familiarly known as the "Coral-Eclipse". The most recent Classic winner to achieve victory was Sea the Stars in 2009.

Brigadier Gerard is the hero of a series of comic short stories by British writer Arthur Conan Doyle. The hero, Etienne Gerard, is a Hussar in the French Army during the Napoleonic Wars. Gerard's most notable attribute is his vanity - he is utterly convinced that he is the bravest soldier, greatest swordsman, accomplished horseman and gallant lover in all France. Gerard is not entirely wrong since he displays notable bravery on many occasions, but his self-satisfaction undercuts this quite often. Obsessed with honour and glory, he is always ready with a stirring speech or a gallant remark to a lady.

Conan Doyle, in making his hero a vain, and often rather uncomprehending Frenchman, was able to satirise both the stereotypical English view of the French, and - by presenting them from Gerard's baffled point of view - English manners and attitudes.

Gerard tells the stories from the point of view of an old man now living in retirement in Paris. We discover that he was born in Gascony in the early 1780s (he is 25 in "How the Brigadier Captured Saragossa"); in "How the Brigadier Rode to Minsk" he attends a review of troops about to depart for the Crimea (1854-5), and this is the last identifiable date in his life, although "The Last Adventure" has a still later setting, with Gerard about to return to his Gascon homeland. He first joins the 2nd Hussars - the Hussars of Chamberan - around 1799, serving as a Lieutenant and Junior Captain. He first sees action at Marengo in Italy in 1800. He transfers to the 3rd Hussars of Conflans in 1807 as a Senior Captain. He speaks somewhat idiosyncratic English, having learned it from an officer in the Irish Regiment of the French Army. By 1810 he is Colonel of the 2nd Hussars. He serves in Spain, Portugal, Italy, Germany and Russia. He is awarded the Grand-Cross of the Légion d'honneur by Napoleon in 1814. There are various discrepancies in the accounts of his life, not the least that in none of the stories except the last is he married.