The King and Queen’s horse Desert Hero raced to a first-place finish in the King George V Stakes
King Charles and Queen Camilla are off to another day at the races!
The King, 74, playfully raised his top hat to well-wishers as he and the Queen, 75, arrived for a third day of horse racing at the Royal Ascot on Thursday. As they did on Tuesday and Wednesday, the couple led the procession of horse-drawn carriages into the parade ring.
Joining them for the third day of the week-long race meeting were King Charles’ sister Princess Anne, her husband Vice Admiral Sir Timothy Laurence and Princess Margaret’s two children. Margaret’s son David Armstrong-Jones, the Earl of Snowdown, joined the King and Queen in their landau, while her daughter Lady Sarah Chatto traveled in the third carriage with her husband, Daniel.
Gold Cup Day is known as Ladies’ Day, and King Charles — sporting a pink tie — embraced the energy when he tipped his top hat after racegoers chanted “God Save the King” after the anthem played on the course.
Queen Camilla wore a pale green chiffon dress by Anna Valentine paired with a feathered hat by Philip Treacy. She also sported a Diamond brooch that belonged to Queen Elizabeth.
Once the Royal Procession reached the parade ring, the royals mingled with some of their other guests, including Sophie, Duchess of Edinburgh and her father, Christopher. Sophie, 57, is back at Ascot for a second day in a row and arrived by Royal Procession yesterday with her husband, Prince Edward.
The King and Queen were in luck during the King George V Stakes when their horse Desert Hero won the event.
After the race, King Charles and Queen Camilla could be seen celebrating, pointing down at their victorious horse and jockey to their guests in the royal box. Desert Hero was ridden by jockey Tom Marquand, and the victory comes with a $65,650 prize, Sky Sports reported.
The royal couple then collected their prize from a familiar face: Queen Elizabeth’s cousin, the Duke of Kent, who awarded them with a silver trophy to mark the victory.
Queen Elizabeth was an avid horse lover as well as a racehorse breeder. When she died, King Charles inherited her horses. Although the new monarch sold some of the horses, Tattersall auction house’s spokesman Jimmy George told the BBC: “It’s nothing out of the ordinary. Every year they would sell horses. The Queen had brood mares of her own, she would breed them and sell them. You can’t keep them all.”
The Gold Cup is the oldest and most prestigious race at Royal Ascot first races in 1807. A crowd of 60,000 were at the course for the day.
It is the first Royal Ascot of Charles’ reign — and he continues tradition by supporting the event with his attendance. The iconic British horse race was a must-attend event for his late mother, Queen Elizabeth, and she went almost every year of her 70-year reign.
Earlier Thursday morning, King Charles stepped out for a service at St. George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle on Windrush Day. The event was dedicated to young people and held to recognize the 75th anniversary of the arrival of 1,027 Caribbean people on the Empire Windrush ship to London in 1948.
“The Windrush’s arrival has become symbolic of the generation of Commonwealth citizens who came to live in Britain between 1948 and 1971,” Royal Museums Greenwich states, and the group is celebrated each year on Windrush Day.