Passionate and committed throughout: don't miss the Queen's life in racing

The Queen does not have a runner in Saturday's Cazoo Derby, but her interest in the Epsom Classic dates back generations, as Julian Muscat recalls in a Racing Post feature on Sunday, which marks Her Majesty's Platinum Jubilee Weekend.

Muscat traces the Queen's life in racing in The Big Read, detailing the time she listened to radio commentary of the 1942 Derby with her younger sister Princess Margaret.

The race featured Big Game, a colt owned by their father King George VI who went off favourite, but could finish only sixth.

Put to the future Queen by her sibling that the result was a shame, the-then Princess Elizabeth replied: "No, it's just horseracing."

Carlton House (red sleeves) finishes third in the 2011 DerbyCredit: Mark Cranham (racingpost.com/photos)

John Warren, the Queen's longstanding racing and bloodstock adviser, suggests there is "nobody in the country, perhaps in the industry worldwide, who has bred more crops of foals" than her.

The knowledge of that process, Muscat recounts, is evident in the story when, aged 12, she accompanied George VI and his racing manager Captain Charles Moore on a tour of the Royal Studs. Moore’s memory failed him when the King asked about the pedigree of the mare Bread Card, whereupon the young princess interjected: "She is by the Derby winner, Manna, out of Book Debt, by Buchan."

Muscat suspects the Queen reacted evenly when news emerged that the John and Thady Gosden-trained Reach For The Moon – a live ante-post hope for Saturday's Derby – would not make the Epsom showpiece. She is used to the sport's ups and downs and nearly won the Classic at her first attempt in 1953, when the race was staged four days after her coronation at Westminster Abbey.

Aureole ran second to Pinza, while 58 years later Carlton House finished third, beaten a length, after being hampered.

The race was won by Pour Moi, whose trainer Andre Fabre was provocatively asked by journalists whether he felt remorse his horse had scuppered the prospect of the Queen winning the only Classic to have eluded her.

"But this was a race between horses, not people," he said. "Otherwise I would finish a long way behind Her Majesty."

Read more from on the Queen's life in racing in The Big Read, available in Sunday's newspaper or online for Members' Club Ultimate subscribers from 6pm on Saturday. Click to sign up.

Now read these . . .

'It just didn't go our way' - how Carlton House narrowly failed in the Derby (Members' Club)

'It was a fairytale' - how Dunfermline lit up the Queen's Silver Jubilee (Members' Club)

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