Queen Elizabeth II’s love for horses is well-known. The Queen would attend the Royal Ascot in summer and waved from the special carriage procession before the start of the prestigious meeting. Horse racing was probably her biggest sporting fascination. She first rode at the age of three and was immediately smitten.
She inherited the breeding and racing stock of her father, King George VI, when she acceded to the throne in 1952. She could be often seen visiting The Royal Stud at her estate at Sandringham.
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Her first winner was a horse called Monaveen, at Fontwell in 1949. Since then, she won at every big, classic British horse racing. The only one she did not get was at The Derby. Her jockeys always wore purple, gold and scarlet, and she has won over 1,800 races as a racehorse owner.
Her biggest win came at Royal Ascot where her horse Estimate won in 2013. It became the first horse owned by a reigning monarch to win the prestigious Gold Cup and was her first win at an elite championship since 1989. In 2021, she was inducted into the Qipco British Champions Series Hall of Fame. People who have seen her at the races say that she always graciously accepted the outcome, win or loss.
In a BBC documentary, The Queen’s Racehorses: A Personal View, the Queen said, “My philosophy about racing is simple. I enjoy breeding a horse that is faster than other people’s. And to me, that is a gamble from a long way back. I enjoy going racing but I suppose, basically, I love horses, and the thoroughbred epitomizes a really good horse to me.”
She even visited America’s greatest horse race, the Kentucky Derby, in 2007.
(With inputs from agencies)
