HORSE’S TRAINER & THEIR LOCATION

Racing and royalty have been intertwined throughout the sport’s history, but never as closely and as intimately as during the lifetime of Queen Elizabeth II. Only her great grandfather, Edward VII, comes close to matching her level of enthusiasm.

Horses – and in particular, racehorses – were her passion, ranking closely behind “country, Commonwealth and family,” as Brough Scott put it in a programme about her wide-ranging equine interests. Within the racing and bloodstock worlds she was greatly respected as an instinctive horsewoman with a superb depth of knowledge of all aspects of the industry, and through the obvious delight she took in victories on the track, the wider public glimpsed what Sir Peter O’Sullevan called “the very human being” her racing friends knew her to be.

On becoming Queen in 1952, she inherited the Royal Studs and her father’s bloodstock interests, but she had already tasted success as an owner – she had her first runner when she was 23 in October 1949, when Astrakhan, given to her as a foal as a wedding present by the Aga Khan, finished second at Ascot. In April the following year the filly became the then Princess Elizabeth’s first winner, at Hurst Park, and the only one to carry her own registered silks of scarlet, purple hooped sleeves and black cap, rather than the royal colours. The Queen enjoyed over 500 winners as an owner.

As Queen, significant success on the racecourse came quickly; King George VI had bred a colt called Aureole, runner-up in the Derby in her coronation year of 1953, and the following year winner of Ascot’s King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes – named after her parents – and the Coronation Cup at Epsom. The Queen was champion owner in 1953 – and again in 1957 – and, after being sent to stud at Wolferton, Aureole was leading sire in 1960 and 1961.

The first of The Queen’s five British Classic winners arrived in 1957, when the Noel Murless-trained Carrozza, whom she had leased from The National Stud, took the Oaks by a short-head under Lester Piggott. A year later her home-bred Pall Mall, trained by Cecil Boyd-Rochfort and ridden by Doug Smith, won the 2000 Guineas.

While the Royal colours were carried to victory by plenty of good horses in the 1960s, including the 1961 Coronation Stakes winner Aiming High and Hopeful Venture, who took the 1968 Grand Prix de Saint-Cloud, it wasn’t until 1974 that The Queen enjoyed further Classic triumph with Highclere — like Aureole, a descendant of the outstanding broodmare Feola, bought and raced by George V. Highclere, trained by Major Dick Hern and ridden by Joe Mercer, won the 1000 Guineas by a short-head from Polygamy, and then the Prix de Diane – the French Oaks – by two lengths.

In 1977, the year of her silver jubilee, Major Hern handled a second Classic winner for The Queen when Dunfermline scored in The Oaks, staying on strongly to win by three-quarters of a length under Willie Carson, who later that season rode her to beat Alleged and Lester Piggott in the