Queen pulls out of Windsor Horse Show at last minute
She chooses to visit her stables instead despite the spectacle being one of her favourite events of the year
THE QUEEN opted to visit her horses privately yesterday rather than attend the first day of the Royal Windsor Horse Show.
The monarch spent 20 minutes with her horses away from the public gaze after apparently pulling out of what would have been a high-profile visit to the show at the eleventh hour.
She had been expected to make the short drive from Windsor Castle to the show ground to watch her horse, First Receiver, compete in a thoroughbred series qualifier.
The area was cleared, her police protection officers were in attendance and the media corralled into position.
But at the last moment, word came from the castle that Her Majesty would not be attending after all.
It was thought there may have been concerns about the number of photographers present, given her ongoing problems with mobility.
Instead, the Queen popped out to her stables at the Royal Mews in Windsor around 90 minutes later.
The Windsor Horse Show is thought to be one of the Queen’s favourite events of the year.
She is believed to have attended every year since it began as a wartime fundraising event in 1943.
The live show was cancelled in 2020 because of the pandemic and went online instead.
Last year, she flew back from Scotland to attend the second day of the equestrian show, where she drove herself to the arena in a Range Rover and was pictured beaming as she soaked up the atmosphere.
This week, she is expected to show 41 animals, compared with 23 or 24 in a usual year, which organisers said reflected the quality of her entries.
Today, she is due to show 14 horses in eight competitions.
It is hoped that the Queen will attend the grand finale on Sunday evening, a Platinum Jubilee celebration that could see 10 of her great-grandchildren riding together in a carriage.
The two-hour show, called A Gallop Through History, hails the monarch as “the heartbeat of the nation”. The journey through 500 years, starting with the Spanish Armada, features gun salutes, steel bands, Bollywood dancing, huskies and around 500 horses. With Alan Titchmarsh at the helm, there are jokes about the British weather, Brexit and the UK’S performance at the winter Olympics.
The first performance took place on Wednesday night before Princess Beatrice and her husband, Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi. The Duke and Duchess of Gloucester were due to attend last night, the Earl and Countess of Wessex tonight, the Princess Royal tomorrow and hopefully, the Queen will attend on Sunday.
It comes just days after the Queen “reluctantly” pulled out of the State Opening of Parliament for the first time in almost 60 years as Buckingham Palace said she continued to suffer with “episodic mobility problems”. It was only the third time she had missed the event during her long reign and the first that Letters Patent was used to hand the constitutional duty to other members of the Royal family.
The Prince of Wales and the Duke of Cambridge, as Counsellors of State, did the honours, marking a notable shift in the former’s responsibilities as heir to the throne. The Queen was last seen in public on March 29, at a service of thanksgiving for her late husband, the Duke of Edinburgh, at Westminster Abbey.
She has since been photographed in the grounds of Sandringham, her Norfolk estate, where she decamped for her birthday in April, but has otherwise been undertaking virtual engagements.