The Queen is one of the most successful owners in flat racing. With her win percentage sitting at just over 15%, this means that she is the 11th most successful owner. This win rate has meant that the Queen has won around £6 million in prize money in the last thirty years. With The Festival quickly approaching us with players now being allow to bet online on the Cheltenham festival, we look at how she has managed to achieve this success over the years.
According to her National Hunt Racing Manager, Sir Michael Oswald, the Queen's passion and understanding of horses and horse racing has been the primary reason for her success. Whilst most owners would focus on the performance on the racetrack, the Queen is known to take a particular interest in the breeding of her horses and regularly visits the Royal Stud in Sandringham to check and assess the development of them.
Whilst away from the racecourse and her racehorses, the Queen regularly catches up with the horse racing world via magazines and newspapers. Despite these magazines and newspapers having tips available in them, such as Cheltenham tips, the Queen has never placed a bet on any horses.
As mentioned earlier, all of the Queen's horses are bred and foaled at the Royal Stud in Sandringham. They are then raised at Polhampton Stud in Hampshire before being passed on to the training facilities of her chosen trainer. These facilities are obviously state-of-the-art and ensure that her race horses get the proper upbringing and development they need in order to compete at the highest level.
Even though these racehorses are raised and trained on some of the finest facilities in horse racing, they still need to receive the best training if they are to success on the race track. Fortunately for them, The Queen has five of the finest race horse trainers in the country working with her horses, including the very successful Sir Michael Stoute. Throughout his race horse training career he has won the 'Champion Trainer of the Year' 10 times, and has been responsible for training horses that have won over 159 'major' races in 10 countries / regions combined. Stoute has also trained horses that have won 15 'British Classic' races.
With a trainer like Sir Michael Stoute championing some of her horses, it is not surprising that the Queen's horses have continued winning races over the last thirty years. Stoute's best 'training achievement' for the Queen came in 2013 when he trained the Queen's horse Estimate to Gold Cup victory at Royal Ascot. It's not just Sir Michael Stoute that is responsible for this success, there are four other trainers who have all contributed to the Queen's success.
Overall, there has been numerous factors which have led to the Queen's success in the past 30 years.