King Charles has made more than £1 million by selling off 14 of the late Queen’s beloved racehorses, strengthening fears that he might be preparing to wind down the royal racing operation.
The King sold more than a third of his mother’s racehorses, which he inherited upon her demise last month, at the renowned Tattersalls October sales in Newmarket, Suffolk this week.
The royal racehorses made him an average of £76,821 each, £1,075,500 in total, with Charles’s first race-winning horse ‘Just Fine’ being sold for £300,000.
Trained by the Queen’s longest-standing trainer Sir Michael Stoute, ‘Just Fine’ won an outstanding victory in Leicester earlier this month, the first win since the late monarch’s demise on September 8.
He was one of four of the Queen’s former horses that sold for six-figure sums.
Meanwhile, ‘Love Affairs’, which was the Queen’s last winner at Goodwood two days before her death, sold for £38,000.
Charles has already had some success since inheriting his mother’s racehorses, with ‘Perfect Alibi’ earning him £28,000 with victory in a Listed contest at Yarmouth earlier this month, but despite this, there are whispers that the new monarch might be preparing to wind down, or at least scale back, the royal racing operation.
A source close to the Royal Sandringham Stud in Norfolk said there’s talk of winding down the breeding process over three years until it ceases to be a commercial operation.
The source said that the Royal stud could be a museum in three years and that it would be a real shame.
A Royal source confirmed Charles will reduce the number of horses but added that the connection between the family and the horse racing enterprise will continue and that there was a desire to continue with the practices and connections with Royal Ascot but not on the same scale as Her Majesty because she had a passion.
The source added that some horses have already been sold as part of the natural churn of buying and selling that comes with running the collection.
The Queen usually sold around seven horses a year, so this month’s sale represents a significant increase, but speaking before the auction, Tattersall’s spokesman Jimmy George denied that the sale of 14 horses was anything out of the ordinary, and he told the BBC that the Queen had brood mares of her own, and she would breed them and sell them and that you can’t keep them all.
It’s an extremely costly pursuit, even just caring for a horse costs a lot, let alone training and breeding et cetera. Perhaps it would be better to streamline it, particularly if your passions lie elsewhere because you need to be fully committed to the process or move the horses on.
It makes perfect sense, especially if Charles doesn’t share his mother’s affection for horses or horse racing.
King Charles made a ton of money just by selling all those horses. I mean, how much money does this born-to-be-rich guy have? Why can’t he give some of that obscene wealth to struggling people? That would certainly then make him a Monarch fit for our times! But right now, he’s a King who has castles, and racehorses, while some people out there are starving and freezing.
The Queen spent money on her hobbies, of which horse racing was the primary one. Clearly, Charles doesn’t have the same pursuits and he doesn’t have to because he’s more interested in conservation, and he should be allowed to spend his own money how he sees fit, but a little hand out to the needy and disadvantaged wouldn’t go amiss, particularly those soldiers that went to war for their country and are now living on the streets.
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