Unique collection of prized racehorse hair and historic Cheltenham Gold Cup trophy sell for combined £64,000

A collection of hair from the manes and tails of some of the world’s most famous racehorses, including Red Rum, Arkle, Shergar and Nijinsky, fetched £38,000 in an auction at the National Horse Racing Museum in Newmarket.

The collection by the late Ray Goddard featured hair from more than 850 horses and was among more than 500 lots to go under the hammer at the Race To History auction, jointly staged by Graham Budd and Weatherbys.

Second top lot was the Cheltenham Gold Cup won by Cottage Rake in 1948, the £26,000 comfortably surpassing the pre-sale estimate of between £10,000 and £15,000.

Cheltenham Gold Cup won by Cottage Rake: second top lot at £26,000

The silver Chesterfield Cup from 1875 made £18,000, while a bronze statue of Shergar, submitted by his former work-rider Cliff Lines, which was gifted by the Aga Khan fetched £10,000. 

Lines – who also auctioned a plaque containing shoes of Shergar and Shareef Dancer, which made £4,000 – said: “I’ll be 90 in a few weeks time and we brought these items to auction as we don’t get to enjoy them as much as we did, as they spend quite a lot of time in the safe. What’s the point in that?”

Other lots of note at the sale were a set of Ascot racecourse badges, which went for £4,200, a collection of 356 Royal Ascot racecards, which made £5,500 and the number cloth worn by Stradivarius when winning the Ascot Gold Cup in 2020, fetching £2,800.

A painting of Desert Orchid made £4,400 while a photograph of Frankel signed by his connections fetched £2,500, nearly ten times more than forecast.

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