FROM STUD AND STABLE Royal Riccarton Not Merely Royal Duty

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30056, 14 February 1963, Page 4

FROM STUD AND STABLE Royal Riccarton Not Merely Royal Duty

The Queen will pay her respects to the New Zealand thoroughbred at Riccarton on Saturday. Going racing is not merely a Royal duty for Her Majesty. The horses engaged in the main races at the Canterbury Jockey Club’s meeting will come under the eye of a horsewoman and a successful owner.

Since the start of her public career she has shown the liveliest interest and fondness for racing, and her patronage must have done much for the sport in England.

The Queen was leading owner in England in 1954, when her 10 winners of 19 races earned £40,993, and again in 1957 when she was represented by 16 winners of 30 races worth £62,211.

One of the 10 horses which won in the Royal colours in 1954 was Aureole bred by her father, King George VI. Possibly Hyperion’s best racing son. Aureole that year won four races, including the most valuable event of the year, the King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes.

In 1953, the Queen’s coronation year, Aureole ran second to Pinza in the Derby. Pinza gave Gordon Richards his first and longawaited Derby win at his twenty-sixth attempt But he himself must have thought this was a poor return to the Queen for her gracious action in knighting him only a few days earlier.

The Queen became leading

English owner in 1957 after a close contest with Sir Victor Sassoon.

Crepello won the Two Thousand Guineas and the Derby in his only two starts for Sir Victor Sassoon that year, and it was only in the last month that the Queen finally finished £3556 15s ahead.

The Queen's best winner that year was Carrozza, which won the Oaks by a short head from Silken Glider.

Carrozza was leased to the Queen for her racing career and reverted to the National Stud, where she had been bred, with a booking to Aureole’s Derby conqueror, Pinza.

The Queen’s Oaks winner is closely related to Gigantic, which is at stud in the North Island.

Gigantic is by Big Game from Sun Chariot, winner of three war-time classics in 1942 for King George VI.

Carrozza was the fourth produce of Calash, an ownsister to Sun Chariot

The Queen has two studs near Sandringham, where her stallions. Aureole and Doutelle, are at service, and the takes a keen interest in the affairs of the National Stud, which was established through sheer luck in the black days of World War I when the tank was a thing of the future and the English Government was scouring the world for remounts for the army.

The patriarch of the

National Stud is Big Game, which up to 1960 sired winners of 393 races worth £243,000, including Combat, unbeaten winner of nine races.

Combat is a brother of Faux Tirage. one of New Zealand’s top sires. Magician, a two-year-old son of Faux Tirage, is the

ruling favourite for the Hampton Court Handicap, one of four races the Queen will watch on Saturday.

The arrangement for horses bred by the National Stud to be leased for their racing careers to the reigning

monarch started in 1943. This was in the time at King George VI and with the great trainer Fred Darling, who scored with Sunblind, Calash, Blue Train, Howdah and Underwood.

In 1947, after the death of Darling, Noel Murless took over at Beckhampton and won with Gigantic, Royal Blue, and Berrylands. In 1952 Murless moved to Newmarket and won the Gor-. don Stakes, Goodwood, for

the Queen with Gay Time, which was bought after he had been second to Tulyar in the Derby, and which was afterwards sold to Japan. Landau, now in Australia, won three good races as a two-year-old in 1953 and three more in 1954 to help the Queen top the winning owners’ list.

Rejoicing 11, now at a Wingatui stud, won a three-year-old stakes at York in 1954 and won four more races later in his career.

In 1955 Sierra Nevada won

the Blue Riband Stakes, Epsom, but broke a leg in the Queen Elizabeth II Stakes at Ascot.

Next year there were successes by Teneretta, Anthracite, Carrozza, Deck Tennis and Ten Bells, and in 1957, Carrozza again, Impala, and Snow Cat.

Snow Cat won the Rous Memorial at Ascot in 1958, and the Royal Stakes at Sandown, beating Alcide. which was a big winner in England and which is a close relation of Brown Brocade, an acceptor at Riccarton on Saturday.

The Queen’s love of horses has been well expressed by the English poet and playwright, Ronald Duncan, who wrote this eloquent apostrophe for the “Horse of the Year Show” in 1954: —

Where in this wide world can man find nobility without pride, friendship without envy or beauty without vanity? Here, where grace is laced with muscle, ani strength by gentleness confined. He serves without servility, he has fought without enmity. There is nothing less violent; there is nothing so quick, nothing more patient. England’s past has been borne on his back. All our history is his endeavour; we are his heirs, he our inheritance. Ladies and Gentlement THE HORSE.