Story highlights
The Queen's horse Estimate wins the Cartier Stayer Award after a stellar year
The four-year-old filly won the 2013 Gold Cup at Royal Ascot in front of the Queen
Her Majesty is a keen horse racing enthusiast just like her mother and father
Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe winner Treve takes the Horse of the Year gong
It is a horse that most certainly meets with Royal approval but for now the Queen is happy for her filly Estimate to luxuriate in the grounds of her Sandringham estate.
But even while the four-year-old puts her feet up after a hectic year on the track she is still winning prizes – adding the prestigious Cartier Stayer Award to her impressive haul of trophies.
Estimate’s most notable triumph was victory at the 2013 Gold Cup, as a thrilled looking Queen cheered it home from the Royal Box at Ascot.
Ridden by Ryan Moore, Estimate stormed to victory in the prestigious Group One race in June, the first time in its 207-year history that the British monarch had owned the winner.
Read: All the queen’s horses: A monarch’s passion
But that is not the extent of her exhaustions.
Estimate has also won four other English Classics – the 1,000 and 2,000 Guineas, The Oaks and St. Leger – meaning that only the Epsom Derby eludes her.
The Queen received the award at Buckingham Palace on Monday and the footage was shown to around 330 guests who attended the ceremony at London’s Dorchester Hotel.
The 87-year-old said: “Thank you very much indeed and it’s very nice to accept the award on behalf of Estimate, who did all the work. That’s very kind.
“Estimate is sitting in a field at Sandringham now having a rest and watching the deer and things like that. Perhaps she’ll come back into training next year.
“I shall be thrilled to keep that (the Cartier Award trophy) and have it as a memento. I was just looking at it and thinking it could join all the trophies we have at Ascot.
“We have all the trophies. I have actually managed to win the Gold Cup, which is unusual.”
Horse racing has long been a love of the Royal family, the Queen’s father King George VI passing on his love of the sport to his daughter Elizabeth.
Read: Tattersalls: Tycoons vie to buy ‘ultimate racehorse’
The Queen Mother also had a passion for steeplechase racing and when she died at the age of 101 in 2002, she could boast 449 winners in her royal colors.
“She adores breeding racehorses,” the Queen’s racing manager John Warren told CNN. “The British bloodstock industry is very lucky to have a patron such as the Queen.”
Said to name all her own horses, the Queen has Royal studs at Sandringham and Wolferton in Norfolk and Polhampton in Berkshire, with around 25 horses racing a season.
The Cartier Horse of the Year gong went to unbeaten three-year-old French filly Treve, who won this year’s Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe.
She also claimed the French Oaks and Prix Vermeille crowns, emulating the feat of Zarkava in 2008 who also won all three titles in a season.
Treve was purchased at auction by the Qatar-based Al Shaqab Racing for £50,000, a snip considering its value after winning the $6.25 million Arc.
