The Queen’s Platinum Jubilee: The Royal Horses
For any owner/breeder, the ideal is that the fillies mares produce go on to be successful racehorses themselves, the simple theory being that they in turn have a better chance of reproducing that success in their foals when they go stud themselves. On such a cycle are the world’s greatest breeding operations founded, be it the Aga Khan’s or the Queen’s. So 1957 turned into something of an annus mirabilis as another top filly from the Royal Studs, Almeria, won four races including the Yorkshire Oaks.
It led to the Queen having the top trio of three-year-old fillies, according to the end-of-season ratings, in Almeria, Carozza, and Mulberry Harbour. Her Majesty finished the season with 30 wins in all and the treasured position of being leading owner on the prize-money list.
These were golden times, continued the following season with another Classic success, and the first with a royal colt, when Pall Mall landed the 2,000 Guineas. On the whole, the Royal Studs under the Queen have probably produced more successful fillies, but other top colts in this period were Pindari, winner of the 1959 King Edward VII Stakes, and Above Suspicion in the same year’s St James’s Palace Stakes, both at Royal Ascot.
Form and Class
They say form in sport is temporary but class is permanent, so after a lull in fortunes in the early 1960s it was no surprise when the Royal string emerged to win the 1965 Eclipse Stakes, the first meeting each season of the top-class middle-distance three-year-olds and their old rivals, with Canisbay. Hopeful Venture was another good colt, but after winning four races he was beaten into second place in the 1967 St Leger, the final Classic of the season, and was then disqualified from first place in a race at France’s top racecourse, Longchamp, on the outskirts of Paris.
Hopeful Venture was even better as a four-year-old, winning a succession of top races such as the Ormonde Stakes at Chester, Royal Ascot’s Hardwicke Stakes, and gaining revenge in France by landing the prestigious Grand Prix de Saint-Cloud.
