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Seventy Glorious Years, Part II

As the celebrations marking the Queen's Platinum Jubilee commence in Britain, we continue our three-part series reflecting on Her Majesty's longstanding commitment to the Turf, written by John Berry

Aureole, who had been bred by the Queen's father, was a wonderful standard-bearer at the outset of her reign. While her father had been alive, she and her mother had begun owning jumpers, jointly enjoying their first National Hunt success when the Peter Cazalet-trained Monaveen (racing in the same colours which Astrakhan bore at Hurst Park) had won over fences at Fontwell in October 1949 before taking the Queen Elizabeth Chase at Hurst Park two months later. After Princess Elizabeth became Queen, though, her mother became the First Lady of National Hunt racing, while Queen Elizabeth took over the Royal Flat string and the Royal Studs with a passion which has never wavered in the subsequent 70 years.

This successful start to the Queen's ownership career set the tone for what was to follow. After Aureole, the next star was another Hyperion colt, High Veldt, whose finest hour came when he came closer than any other horse to beating the Italian champion Ribot when runner-up in the 1956 King George And Queen Elizabeth S. The Royal Ascot triumphs of Jardiniere in the King George V S. in 1955 and of Alexander in the Royal Hunt Cup in 1956 were great occasions, while the win of Atlas in the 1956 Doncaster Cup proved to be the first of three triumphs for Her Majesty in the race in a four-year period, with Apprentice taking the race in 1958 and '59.

It turned out that 1957 was a true annus mirabilis for the Royal string, which consisted of 21 homebreds with Boyd-Rochfort in Freemason Lodge augmented by a few horses leased from the National Stud and trained by Noel Murless in Warren Place. The monarch leasing horses from the National Stud was a tradition whose roots traced back to 1907 when King Edward VII had leased six yearlings from Colonel Hall Walker (later Lord Wavertree) from Tully Stud in Ireland, which lovely property was later given to the nation to be the National Stud and is now the Irish National Stud. Minoru was one of this sextet, while in later years the habit was revived on the advice of the royal bloodstock manager Captain Charlies Moore, with the first batch of yearlings containing both Big Game and Sun Chariot.

Three fillies in particular looked very good in the spring of 1957: the Boyd-Rochfort pair of Mulberry Harbour and Almeria, and the Murless-trained Carozza. Carozza won the Princess Elizabeth S. at Epsom and Mulberry Harbour took the Cheshire Oaks, but Almeria struggled on the downhill run in the Lingfield Oaks Trial, finishing a disappointing third. Mulberry Harbour and Carozza pressed on to Epsom for the Oaks with, sensibly, Almeria waiting instead for Ascot. At Epsom Harry Carr wore the first colours on Mulberry Harbour, leaving the 21-year-old Lester Piggott to bear a distinguishing white cap on Carozza. Mulberry Harbour ran abysmally to finish last but Carozza landed a thrilling win, holding off the late challenge of the Irish raider Silken Glider by inches. It was the first royal triumph in an Oaks at Epsom (although, of course, Sun Chariot had won a wartime substitute at Newmarket) and the first royal Classic winner at Epsom since Minoru had won the Derby for the Queen's great-grandfather Edward VII in 1909.

At Ascot, Almeria showed her Lingfield form to be all wrong by winning the Ribblesdale S. before beating Irish Derby runner-up Hindu Festival in the Bentinck S. at Goodwood. She then won the Yorkshire Oaks in a canter before taking the Park Hill S. at Doncaster. Carozza failed to repeat the excellence which she had shown at Epsom and was retired after a poor run in the Nassau S. at Goodwood, but Mulberry Harbour bounced back from her Oaks debacle (when it was suspected that she may have been doped) by taking the Newmarket Oaks in the autumn. At the end of the season, the Jockey Club handicapper rated Almeria the best 3-year-old filly trained in England, Carozza the second best and Mulberry Harbour the third best. The Queen ended the year as champion owner for a second time, with winnings of £62,211. Eleven of the 21 horses at Freemason Lodge had won a total of 23 races, with Murless providing a further seven victories.

That glorious season would clearly be hard to follow, but the following year, when the Queen finished second in the list of leading owners, contained several more treats even so. The brightest star was the Palestine 3-year-old Pall Mall, who had come to hand early in his 2-year-old season the previous year, winning on debut at Haydock before taking the New (now Norfolk) S. at Royal Ascot. On his resumption in the spring of 1958 he struggled in the heavy ground at Kempton first time out and thus failed to give the Queen a fourth consecutive win in the Kempton Park 2,000 Guineas Trial (following Alexander, High Veldt and Doutelle) but then won the Thirsk Classic Trial before, when seemingly his stable's second string, he landed a shock 20/1 victory under Doug Smith in the 2,000 Guineas, providing the Queen with her first homebred Classic winner. Smith's presence in the saddle provided a pleasing note of continuity as he had previously won a Classic up the Rowley Mile in the royal silks when guiding Hypericum to victory for King George VI in the 1,000 Guineas 12 years earlier.

The following month, Her Majesty enjoyed a Royal Ascot double when Restoration won the King Edward VII S. (then the second most valuable race at the meeting, behind only the Gold Cup) on his racecourse debut and Snow Cat won the Rous Memorial S. At Newmarket's July Meeting, Miner's Lamp, previously winner of the Blue Riband Trial S. at Epsom's Spring Meeting, won the Princess Of Wales's S., in those days the most valuable race run all season on the July Course.

Furthermore, Almeria remained in training as a 4-year-old in 1958 as did Above Board's Prince Chevalier colt Doutelle, who had been the Queen's best colt of 1957, when he had suffered a very rough passage in the Derby after winning the Lingfield Derby Trial. Doutelle got his 4-year-old season off to a great start by winning on his reappearance at Newbury before beating the champion Ballymoss in the Ormonde S. at Chester. In the summer both Almeria and Doutelle lined up in the King George VI And Queen Elizabeth S. at Ascot and they ran great races, finishing second and third behind Ballymoss, who went on to win the Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe in the autumn.

A daughter of Alycidon from the Hyperion mare Avila (who had won the Coronation S. at Royal Ascot in 1949), Almeria subsequently became an excellent broodmare, her produce including 1970 Doncaster Cup winner Magna Carta and 1971 Prix de Psyché heroine Albany, herself the dam of 1979 Queen's Vase winner Buttress. In a tragically short stud career which ended when he died after an accident in his stable in December 1962, Doutelle produced several good horses for the Queen including the 1965 Eclipse S. hero Canisbay.

The 1950s ended with the Queen's run of form continuing. She finished third in the owners' championship in 1959 with two high-class 3-year-old colts making significant contributions, including landing a double at Royal Ascot when Above Suspicion won the St. James's Palace S. and Pindari won the King Edward VII S. Pindari (who was bred on the Classic Derby winner/Oaks winner formula, being by Pinza out of Sun Chariot) subsequently won the Great Voltigeur S. at York. Furthermore, two terrific performances under big weights in handicaps stood out: Agreement, midway between his two Doncaster Cup victories, won the Chester Cup and Pall Mall finished second in the Royal Hunt Cup. It is hard to imagine the previous year's 2,000 Guineas winner running in the race nowadays!

That Royal Ascot also included another winner for the Royal Family. Bali Ha'i (NZ) had been given to the Queen Mother when she was on a tour of New Zealand the previous year. She had gone to the races at Trentham on a day when Bali Ha'i won and, on hearing that Her Majesty was admiring the horse, his owner kindly gave him to her. She brought him back to England and sent him to Cecil Boyd-Rochfort, who prepared him to win the Queen Alexandra S.

The Queen's fortunes waned during the 1960s in tandem with those of Boyd-Rochfort, who was coming to the end of his long and distinguished career. He had been champion trainer in 1958 and finished second in the table in 1959, but in 1960 his horses suffered from a virus for much of the year and he sent out only 13 winners (none owned by the Queen) from a string of nearly 60. Happily, things picked up a bit and royal winners from Freemason Lodge during the decade included Canisbay, successful in the Wood Ditton S. at Newmarket in 1964 and the Eclipse S. at Sandown in 1965; Apprentice and Gaulois, who landed successive Goodwood Cup victories in 1965 and '66, with the former having already taken that year's Yorkshire Cup; Impudent and Amicable, winners of the Lingfield Oaks Trial S. in 1961 and '63 respectively; and Hypericum's daughter Highlight, successful in the Ash S. at Kempton Park in 1961.

Arguably the best horse raced by the Queen in the 1960s was Hopeful Venture, a son of Aureole who was bred by the National Stud, from which he was leased by the Queen and sent to Noel Murless in Warren Place. He proved to be a wonderful trouper. As a 3-year-old in 1967 he won the Wood Ditton S. at Newmarket, the Grosvenor S. at Chester, the Princess of Wales's S. at Newmarket and the Oxforshire S. at Newbury. He also finished second in both the King Edward VII S. at Royal Ascot and the St. Leger. The following year he won the Ormonde S. at Chester, the Hardwicke S. at Royal Ascot and the Grand Prix de Saint-Cloud, beating a top-class field which included the subsequent Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe winner Vaguely Noble.

A new trainer was added to the royal roster when Captain Peter Hastings-Bass received half of the Queen's intake of yearlings in the autumn of 1963 at Park House Stables in Kingsclere, near Polhampton Lodge Stud, on which the Queen had taken a lease the previous year to replace the old royal stud at Hampton Court. Kingsclere has been home to many of the Queen's horses ever since. Tragically, Peter Hastings-Bass died from cancer, aged only 43, the following year. The Queen remained a patron of the stable as Hastings-Bass's assistant Ian Balding (who later married Captain Hastings-Bass's daughter Emma) took over, as she subsequently also did when Balding handed over to his son Andrew in 2003. The connection with the family was further strengthened when Captain Hastings-Bass's son William (now Lord Huntingdon) started training in Newmarket in 1977 after having served as assistant trainer to Noel Murless, and he subsequently occupied the royal stables at West Ilsley through the 1990s.

One of the first horses whom William Hastings-Bass trained for Her Majesty was Australia Fair (Aus), a daughter of Without Fear (Fr) who was given to the Queen by the Australian nation as a Silver Jubilee present. Disappointingly, neither she nor her offspring achieved anything of note in the royal colours, but she did breed the high-class sprint handicapper Double Blue, a son of the Town Crier stallion Town And Country, whom the Queen's long-term racing manager, the 7th Earl of Carnarvon (formerly Lord Porchester), was standing at Highclere Stud. To continue a long-running family connection and friendship, the late 7^th Earl of Carnarvon's son-in-law John Warren succeeded him in 2001 as the Queen's racing manager, a position which he holds to this day.

Tomorrow: An enduring patron of the Turf

If you missed the first part of this series, you can catch up here.

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Seventy Glorious Years

A significant milestone in British history is reached on Sunday as the Queen becomes the country's first monarch to reign for 70 years. Throughout that time, Her Majesty has remained a fervent supporter of the Turf. In the first of a three-part series, John Berry looks back at the Queen's strong ties to horseracing.

Racing, the king of sports, has been the sport of kings and queens since the dawn of time. In Great Britain, the monarch's love of the sport can be traced back at least 500 years to the passion which the Stuart kings brought to Newmarket and thus established the town and its Heath as the centre of the racing world. King Charles II famously rode in races on the Heath, while the following century Queen Anne's love of the sport resulted in a racecourse being founded on Ascot Heath in 1711, a short carriage-ride from Windsor Castle. Racegoers at Royal Ascot are reminded of her creation every year when the meeting starts with the G1 Queen Anne S.

No monarch, though, has given a greater commitment to the sport over a longer period than Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, whose 70 years on the throne represent seven decades as the greatest, most passionate, unwavering and knowledgeable patron any sport could ever have.

Queen Elizabeth II has followed perfectly in the footsteps of her great-grandfather King Edward VII. He, though, only spent a relatively short time (nine years) on the throne, having already reached the age of 59 by the time that his mother Queen Victoria passed away on Jan. 22, 1901, aged 81. She remained famously unamused by the sport, but he was as passionate as she was uninterested. Many of his greatest years as an owner (including 1896 when the homebred Persimmon landed the Derby and St Leger; 1897 when Persimmon won the Gold Cup and the Eclipse S.; and 1900 when he raced not only his homebred Triple Crown winner Diamond Jubilee but also the Grand National winner Ambush II) came while he was still Prince of Wales, but he remained an equally enthusiastic and successful patron of the sport after ascending to the throne. Most notably, he won the Derby for a third time when Minoru took the great race in 1909, the first time that the Derby winner had been owned by the monarch.

King Edward VII's focus on racing remained steadfast to the very end. His dying words, on May 6, 1910, came after his son, who was about to become King George V, had informed him of the victory that afternoon of his horse Witch Of The Air in the 4.15 at Kempton Park: “Yes, I have heard of it. I am very glad.”

Arguably King Edward VII's most significant act as regards the development of the royal racing enterprise was to create a stud at Sandringham in Norfolk in 1886. A stream of royal winners started to flow from Sandringham Stud almost immediately, and they still do to this day.

King George V had inherited his father's passion for the sport and he in turn passed it on to his sons. He also did plenty to light the flame in the heart of his young grand-daughter, the future Queen Elizabeth II. In the spring of 1928 he became the first monarch to win the 1000 Guineas as both owner and breeder with the victory of Scuttle, trained by William Jarvis in the royal stables at Egerton House on the western edge of Newmarket Heath. That evening he wrote in his diary, “I am very proud to win my first Classic and that I bred her at Sandringham”. He later enthralled his favourite grand-daughter with the tale of how the filly, ridden by Joe Childs, played up at the barrier and dwelt as the tapes went up but ultimately came off best at the end of a thrilling duel with Gordon Richards' mount Jurisdiction.

King George V's elder son, the future King Edward VIII, while Prince of Wales threw himself into the sport with such enthusiasm that questions were asked in Parliament by disapproving MPs about whether it was satisfactory that the future king was risking his neck riding in races and point-to-points. Once he had become the monarch, though, King Edward VIII became more famous for triggering constitutional debates on considerably more serious subjects, the upshot of which was his abdication in favour of his younger brother, who thus became King George VI, on Dec. 11, 1936.

King George VI, the father of our current monarch, thus was not born to be the king, but had the crown unexpectedly thrust upon him. He did not let this abrupt and unexpected turn of events interfere with his love of racing. Far from it: the royal colours flourished while in his possession, as is confirmed by the famous photograph of him, wearing his military uniform, leading Sun Chariot into the winner's enclosure at Newmarket's July Course after her triumph in the wartime substitute Oaks in 1942. She had previously won the 1000 Guineas and subsequently completed the Triple Crown by taking the St Leger. Furthermore, Big Game took that year's 2000 Guineas, giving the King victory in four of the five Classics. After the end of the war, he won the 1000 Guineas again when Hypericum scored in 1946, with Princess Elizabeth present to welcome the daughter of Hyperion back to scale.

The elder of King George VI's two daughters, Queen Elizabeth II was aged only 25 when her father died on Feb. 6, 1952. Thus began the longest and arguably most successful reign in British history, a reign during which, leading by example, she has steered the country through the enormous changes which society has undergone since the Second World War. It has also been a reign in which her never-diminishing love of racing has seen the sport immeasurably enriched by the passion of its greatest patron.

As regards her father, from a racing man's point of view he could have had no better epitaph than that which appeared in Cope's Royal Cavalcade of the Turf, published in 1953. King George VI's last top-class horse had been Hypericum's Straight Deal half-sister Above Board, who enjoyed a splendid season in 1950, winning the Yorkshire Oaks, Park Hill S. and Cesarewitch H. Reflecting on that magnificent six-length Cesarewitch triumph, Alfred Cope wrote, “With the cheers for that splendid Royal victory ringing in our ears, it is perhaps a suitable moment to take our leave of a King who, of all the Kings and Queens of the Turf, will be remembered in years to come as one who, by his example, raised the Crown to undreamed-of popularity and respect, while his Turf career brought back to not a few of the older generation some trace of those golden hours they had known when Edward VII was King.”

Having become Queen aged 25 on the death of her father in 1952, Queen Elizabeth II was not crowned until the following year when a splendid ceremony was held in Westminster Abbey–a ceremony which the world was able to enjoy as it was the first coronation to be televised. That, though, was not The Queen's only major event that week. Fittingly, the sport of kings loomed large in her consciousness even during that momentous period. The Coronation took place on Tuesday, June 2 and when the Derby was run four days later she had the thrill of owning one of the leading chances: the Hyperion colt Aureole, a close relative of Hypericum, who had won the Lingfield Derby Trial the previous month.

Queen Elizabeth II had taken over ownership of the royal string on the death of her father the previous year. She had previously owned one Flat winner: Astrakhan, who had been given to her as a wedding present by the Aga Khan III in 1947 and who won a maiden race at Hurst Park in her own colours of 'scarlet, purple hooped sleeves, black cap'. Her first winner as Queen was the 3-year-old Hyperion colt Choir Boy at Newmarket in the spring of 1952, but he did not race that day in the royal livery: while the court was in mourning it was decided that any royal runners carry the colours of the Duke of Norfolk. The period of mourning had finished by the time that the Lancashire Oaks was run at Manchester, and the victory in that race by Stream Of Light provided the Queen with her first success with the royal colours. Her best horse in 1952, though, was the 2-year-old Aureole, who made a winning debut in the Acomb S. at York's Ebor Meeting before finishing unplaced in the Middle Park S. at Newmarket in the autumn.

Aureole's second place in the 1953 Derby behind Pinza (whose jockey Gordon Richards had just been awarded a knighthood in the Coronation honours) was wonderful. The magical spell continued at Royal Ascot where Choir Boy, who had had to miss the remainder of the previous season after splitting a pastern, completed a great comeback from injury by taking the Royal Hunt Cup. Another special event that week came when the Queen appointed her trainer Cecil Boyd-Rochfort a Commander of the Royal Victorian Order, investing him at Ascot. A further thrill came in the autumn when Aureole took the Cumberland Lodge S. at Ascot.

The first foal of Hypericum's Donatello half-sister Angelola (who had won the Lingfield Oaks Trial, Yorkshire Oaks and Newmarket Oaks in 1948 for King George VI and finished second in the Oaks), Aureole did even better at four. In the summer of 1954 he won three feature races: at Epsom in the Coronation Cup, at Royal Ascot in the Hardwicke S. and at Ascot in the race named after The Queen's parents, the King George VI And Queen Elizabeth S. At Royal Ascot he was part of a double for The Queen on the final day of the meeting, with the impeccably-bred Landau (who was by the 1945 Derby winner Dante from Sun Chariot) taking the Rous Memorial S. under Gordon Richards. Later in the summer Landau, who was leased from the National Stud as his dam had been, won the Sussex S. at Goodwood.

At the end of the year, The Queen became champion owner for the first time, with a prize-money total of £40,993 (three quarters of which was won by Aureole) from her 19 wins. Second place, with roughly £1,000 less, was taken by Sterling Clark, whose 25 wins included the Derby triumph of Never Say Die, the first Kentucky-bred to win the greatest race of all. The Queen thus emulated the achievement of her great-grandfather King Edward VII who (while Prince of Wales) had been champion owner in 1900 and of her father King George VI, who had been champion owner in 1942.

Tomorrow: A second championship and a first homebred Classic winner

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