The Queen could not hide her love of the racecourse
IN THE last week, there have been various attempts to paint Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II as British sport’s standard bearer.
She wasn’t. She didn’t care for the national sport, football — it was close to 50 years since she attended an FA Cup final — and her greatest contributions were as a champion of the country, rather than a lover of any game.
So she was brilliant at winning over the vain and impressionable members of the International Olympic Committee to earn London the 2012 Olympics, but you weren’t going to then find her at the judo. Horse racing was the exception. Horse racing was a passion. The Queen was a country woman at heart. Were it not for abdications and other twists of fate, she would have remained minor royalty living her life in a stately pile, surrounded by horses and dogs. If her uncle doesn’t relinquish the throne she stays the first daughter of the Duke of York. She’s Princess Beatrice. It makes her extraordinary sense of duty all the more admirable. So, while every sport has tried hard, perhaps the finest tribute of all was the simple racecard for the St Leger meeting at Doncaster on Sunday. In sombre monochrome, it showed a young monarch cheering one home at the Derby in 1978, with her fist clenched and arm raised in celebratory salute. It is a special image. There are not too many of her in such a natural pose, enjoying sport. There is no record of her leaping to her feet when England scored in 1966, for instance.
Yet, around racing, she was different. Speaking this week, the Bishop of Durham told a story about sharing a sofa with the Queen, as she watched one of her horses run in America. Paul Butler described her springing up and screaming the horse home, only to see it beaten by a head on the line. ‘She was so cross,’ the Bishop said. And there will be a lot of mourning, pomp and circumstance in the coming days. But if you like to imagine your Queen engaged, human and furiously berating a jockey for missing the break, that one’s for you.