Three Magical Wednesdays at Royal Ascot

My first visit to Royal Ascot was in 1960 when I had just left Cambridge and was staying with a great friend whose parents had a “grace and favour “ house in Windsor Castle.  After lunch for four days  I drove my car to join the Royal motorcade through the middle of Windsor Park to be met by a police escort which took us in a very short time to a car park opposite the stands.

I went as well on Saturday which then was not strictly Royal Ascot and I came away with bookmakers’ money in my pocket!

I had my biggest bet, £50, an enormous sum, for me to win £40. The race was the Queen Mary Stakes, a two year old fillies’ race over 5 furlongs. The horse I chose was called “New Move”, trained by Sir Noel Murless and ridden by Lester Piggott. When she pulled clear of the field after 2 furlongs and won by a distance, I told myself that I was a very lucky “b” and must not tempt fate again.

Little did I then know that 57 years later this June I would be standing in the winner’s enclosure after the same race when a filly called “Heartache” had won. My wife Rosie and I are members of the 75 strong Hot to Trot Syndicate which has a half share in this filly and she had just trounced the USA trained  odds- on favourite  called “Happy as a Fool “.

One of the racing correspondents in a daily paper wrote that the Hot to Trot team should be in the Guinness Book of Records as 50 of its gleeful members were in the winner’s enclosure, beating the previous record of 40 by Sheik Mahomet and his retainers!

However that is not the end of my Magical Wednesdays at Royal Ascot. In 2006 my stepson, Lord Derby’s remarkable racehorse and broodmare  “Ouija Board” won the most valuable race at the meeting, the Prince of Wales’s Stakes. She was not only owned by him but also bred at his Stanley House Stud Farm which is managed by his brother Peter Stanley. I was in the winner’s enclosure with them too on that memorable day.

How lucky I have been!

Bill Spiegelberg,

Chairman of Cheshire Hunt Properties Ltd. since 1995, which has been a client of Denton Clark and Fisher German since 1994.