Queen Elizabeth II, the longest reigning monarch of England, passed away on September 8. Out of the many things, Her Majesty took a keen interest in, sports was one of them. She was an avid follower of horseracing and was a regular presence at the Royal Ascot each June, where she witnessed victory with Phantom Gold in 1995 and the popular Gold Cup win with Estimate in 2013.

The Queen’s characteristic purple and red colours were celebrated at the 2022 Derby meeting, with 40 former and active jockeys attending the event to form a guard of honour for the royalty in celebration of Her Majesty’s Platinum Jubilee. Several sporting events, including the English Premier League, were suspended for the week to commemorate her death.

Here are the Queen’s best horses through the years:

Aureole

Aureole was one of the Queen’s first genuine horses, who nearly gave Her Majesty a win in the 1953 Derby, only a year after her coronation. It was a two-year-old Aureole who came fresh out of the blocks before eventually coming on his own a year later, winning the Lingfield Derby Trial, followed by a spectacular race to come second only to Gordon Richards’s Pinza at Epsom.

Aureole, at four, registered a comfortable win in the Coronation Cup at Epsom and also repeated the glory in the Hardwicke Stakes for trainer Cecil Boyd-Rochfort, with a marginal score from French colt Janitor. In spite of unseating his rider Eph Smith during the mid-race prior to King George VI & Queen Elizabeth Stakes, the horse and the jockey got back to their sports quickly and achieved an extraordinary race, going past Darius, the 2000 Guineas winner, in what was his last race.