IT WAS playtime for the Queen of England yesterday. The serious bit complete, there were opportunities to indulge her passion for thoroughbred horseflesh. This was not the time to mention chef Richard Corrigan’s recently declared grá for horsemeat as charcuterie.
At about 11.15am, the royal Range Rover and entourage turned into the Irish National Stud in Kildare, where the Tricolour flew at half-mast to mark the death of Dr Garret FitzGerald. Buckingham Palace issued a statement expressing the Queen’s sadness at hearing the news about “a true statesman . . . who made a lasting contribution to peace and will be greatly missed”.
The State was well represented by several Ministers including Dr James Reilly. Did he ever think he would be at the National Stud to meet the Queen?
“No – and I didn’t think I’d be at a State dinner either”, was the trenchant reply. “There was real warmth on all sides . . . If there’s a tinge of sadness, it is that Garret wasn’t there because his initiation of the Anglo-Irish Agreement is the foundation on which today is built.”
With Fine Gael colleagues Simon Coveney and Shane McEntee, he waited patiently with the sensibly dressed cream of the industry to see the Queen alight in a vivid cornflower-blue coat and hat.
Not that anyone was noticing the outfit. To a man and woman, they stuck to horsey chat. “You know, she’s won every classic except the Derby”, said a helpful horsey person, “and this year she has Carlton House.”
Right, mumbled media people who, with the rare exception, couldn’t tell a thoroughbred from a tortoise and just wanted to know if any of the horses were hers.
And what was Sea the Stars exactly? And was Arkle around, eh? “Well, she sends mares [to stallions] here and to Gilltown,” said the helpful Robert Hall of RTÉ.
Snipers with binoculars and a tripod conspicuously occupied the roof area over the stables housing Invincible Spirit, the pride of the National Stud.
There was a touch of the garden party about the proceedings as the chair of the stud’s board, Lady Chryss O’Reilly, dressed in a a fetching silk linen taupe and cream skirt suit with matching hat and practical flat shoes, and chief executive John Osbourne escorted the Queen around a pavilion promoting the Irish Farriery School. And they visited another where champion jockey Johnny Murtagh introduced apprentices and alumni from the Racing Academy and Centre for Education.
Not a lot of people know this, but just as trainee pilots use cockpit simulators, trainee jockeys use horse simulators, viz a kind of bucking bronco with a fake horse’s head.
A young trainee gave a gentle demonstration that resembled a child on a gentle rocking horse. The Duke of Edinburgh urged her to ratchet it up a notch and suddenly she was going like the clappers, even using the whip.
Interestingly, when Minister of State Shane McEntee later asked the Duke if had much interest in horses himself, his candid reply was that he hadn’t. “The definition of a good marriage is not to have the same interests,” he pronounced, racing away for another engagement as the Queen happily eyed up a couple of stallions at very close quarters.
Invincible Spirit – whose first set of progeny set a world-record of 35 individual two-year-old winners – showed his credentials by rearing up impressively in front of her.
The stud had invited along an impressive gathering to make her feel right at home: top trainers Jessica Harrington, Willie Mullins, Michael “Mouse” Morris, Arthur Moore, Gordon Elliot and Henry de Bromhead, as well as champion jockeys Johnny Murtagh and TP Burns. Willie Robinson – who famously rode Millhouse to victory in another era – was there with his wife Susan (nee Hall), who lived there as child, when her father ran the stud. Willie and the Queen reminisced about how he rode her late mother’s horse, Laffy, to victory in the Ulster Harp National some 50 years ago.
Then the Queen unveiled a sculpture dedicated to Sea the Stars, the champion thoroughbred racehorse bred at the National Stud. Designed by artist Anthony Scott, the beautiful bronze sphere features the north constellation in early January, and inside a horse with its neck arched to look up at the night sky. Through it, Scott tells the story of the eccentric but brilliant Col William Hall-Walker, who used horoscopes as a breeding aid and stables with glass ceilings for the horses.
Afterward, the Queen left for a private lunch at Gilltown Stud near Kilcullen, Co Kildare, where the Aga Khan had flown in his French chef to cook for the grand occasion. And today, we’re told, she will be thrilled to see Galileo in Coolmore.
