What You Didn’t Know About Queen Elizabeth’s Racehorses

A horse lover through and through, Queen Elizabeth II has long gotten lost in her stables while grooming, breeding and racing her horses. After having her first riding lesson at three years old, the future Queen came to adore everything about the upper class sport, Reader’s Digest reports. When she was four, Elizabeth and her sister, Princess Margaret got their own ponies — the rest was royal history.

As a leading owner of some of the nation’s top racehorses, the Queen’s love of the animals spurred beyond just her desire to ride them. “She adores breeding racehorses,” her racing manager John Warren told CNN. “The British bloodstock industry is very lucky to have a patron such as the queen.” According to the outlet, her most notable achievement as a horse breeder comes from her win at the Gold Cup at Royal Ascot with her horse, Estimate. As for the names of her beloved racers, the monarch comes up with them all on her own.

“She names all her own horses, I believe — it gives her fantastic pleasure, planning the whole process,” Nick Attenborough, a spokesperson for Great British Racing, said to CNN.

Queen Elizabeth's racehorses make her a lot of money

As if her retinue of fabulous palaces, jewels and private jets weren’t enough, Queen Elizabeth’s horses are obviously some of the nicest money can buy. Reader’s Digest reports that she’s made nearly $9 million from her racehorses alone, adding to her $530 million fortune.

Her horses go up for competition quite frequently, with the outlet noting that, between 1988 and 2017, Queen Elizabeth’s horses ran a total of 2,830 races and won 451 of them. In 2016, her horses raked in nearly $800,000 in prize money. But, most of this money likely pours back into their training and facility management, Harper’s Bazaar explains.

Much like the plot in The Crown, Queen Elizabeth’s first love was training horses and her Queenly duties may have gotten in the way of a full-time career. “If the Queen wasn’t the Queen, she would have made a wonderful trainer,” her racing adviser John Warren said in an interview with The Telegraph in 2008. “She has such an affinity with horses and is so perceptive.”

With deep pockets and a natural knack for the sport, Queen Elizabeth’s horse training affinity proves to be much more than a hobby.

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