'Her daily presence inspired the galleries to treat it as a special occasion'

For 74 unbroken years to 2019 the Queen, initially as Princess Elizabeth, was ever-present in the procession at Royal Ascot. Her attendance was as certain as it was reassuring but Covid's subsequent intrusion, together with her health-enforced absence in June, gave us an uncomfortable premonition of a royal meeting bereft of its most ardent supporter.

The Queen rode in the lead carriage every year from 1952, the first time she attended as monarch after the death of her father, George VI. Her patronage of Royal Ascot rose above decades of oscillating sentiment about the royal family's role in British life. As she disembarked in the parade ring the procession's allusion to pomp and pageantry made hardened republicans stand proud and tall.

Put simply, the Queen was Royal Ascot's beating heart. Crowds thronged around the parade ring in greater numbers for a glimpse of her than to acclaim winners of the Gold Cup, the exception coming when Estimate carried the royal silks to win the meeting's feature race in 2013.

It remains to be seen how Royal Ascot evolves in her absence. Her daily presence inspired the galleries to treat the fixture as a special occasion, all the more so for the requirement to dress up at a time when society at large has taken to dressing down. The Ascot executive will be anxious to glean whether their full-house signs may become redundant in the coming years.

Ascot became indelibly linked with the British monarchy when it was established by Queen Anne in 1711. The archives relate that Anne was following the Royal Buckhounds in her self-driven carriage when she came across an ideal tract of heathland six miles from Windsor Castle. The terrain, which she deemed ideal for horse racing, was duly bought by the Crown for £558.

Queen Anne was in harmony with her great grandfather James I, who established Newmarket as a sporting centre, principally for hunting, in the early 17th century. Her uncle Charles II, himself passionate about racing, consolidated Newmarket as the hub of the sport in Britain but Anne's role in securing the parcel of land on which Ascot racecourse sits today gave rise to the royal meeting's creation in 1911.

The Queen's interest in racing was spawned in 1942 when she was taken by her father to visit Fred Darling's Beckhampton stable, where Roger and Harry Charlton train today, and where the King's horses in training included Big Game and Sun Chariot, winners of that year's 2,000 and 1,000 Guineas.

She was so enchanted she paid her first visit soon after to the Royal Studs, where she was much taken by a colt foal who would be named Rising Light.

That led to her following Rising Light's career with particular interest. Her parents took her racing for the first time in 1945, when Rising Light contested the wartime Derby at Newmarket in which he finished fifth. Three months later she paid her first visit to Ascot to watch Rising Light win in the royal silks. She was 20 years old.

The royal procession takes placed at a sunkissed Ascot in 2019Credit: John Phillips (Getty Images)

The royal meeting, suspended during the war years, reconvened in 1946, since when the Queen was ever-present. Together with the Derby, Royal Ascot week was the first entry inked into her diary, which was drawn up 18 months in advance.

She hosted lunch at Windsor Castle before racing, when a distinguished daily cast of guests ranged from visiting royalty, to ambassadors and diplomats, right through to her racing acquaintances. It was a rare opportunity for her to combine duty with pleasure.

Mornings during Ascot week were busy in the early years of the Queen's reign. She would frequently ride to the racecourse from Windsor as part of a royal posse that would watch horses from abroad going through their morning paces.

Her involvement with Ascot stepped up a level in October 1949, when she had her first runner. A filly foal was given to her as a present by the Aga Khan on her marriage to Prince Philip, which she named Astrakhan. There would be no fairytale ending to the Sandwich Stakes, in which Astrakhan proved no match for the hot favourite, The Golden Road.

But another gift, this time from the present Aga Khan, would see the Queen bring a lifetime's yearning to fruition. On her 80th birthday in 2006 she was given a filly foal from each of six mares owned by the Aga Khan. One of them, Estimate, nearly reduced the grandstand to rubble when she won the Gold Cup in a pulsating finish in 2013.

The cheering was on a par rarely seen at the royal meeting. The Queen led what could justly be described as a stampede towards the winner's enclosure as Estimate, trained by Sir Michael Stoute, was led in. A young Princess Elizabeth had said she prized the Derby above all other races but in the aftermath she told Stoute the Gold Cup was the race she had most wanted to win.

As much was clear from television images relayed from the royal box, where the Queen was consumed by the intensity of the finish and the prospect of making history. No British monarch had previously won the Gold Cup.

That televised intrusion amounted to a breach of protocol. Cameras of any kind cannot be trained on the royal enclosure, much less into the royal box, yet there was no royal censure when similar images depicting the Queen's unbridled joy were aired following Free Agent's victory in the 2008 Chesham Stakes. Her exultant mood was doubtless enhanced by the nine-year wait for a royal winner at the venue.

The move away from a strict adherence to protocol was in keeping with the Queen's inaugural visit to Royal Ascot as sovereign in 1952. Onlookers were astonished to see her leaning happily against the paddock rail among her subjects, assessing the horses intently without the formality redolent of previous monarchs.

And visitors to the royal box were surprised by her reaction to watching her first runner as sovereign when Choir Boy contested the Queen Anne Stakes, the opening race on opening day. With her youthful disposition she laughed loudly at the absurdity of Choir Boy's effort – or more accurately, the singular lack of it as the colt came home with the washing.

Choir Boy ran in the colours of the Duke of Norfolk. In that year Britain was still mourning the death of King George VI; it was deemed inappropriate for the royal silks to be on show. But Choir Boy carried them successfully the following year in winning the Royal Hunt Cup, in the process becoming the first of Her Majesty's 24 Royal Ascot winners. Choir Boy prevailed just three weeks after her coronation at Westminster Abbey.

The 1950s was a golden decade for the Queen's racing fortunes. At its close her Royal Ascot haul of winners had risen to 11, courtesy of a double in 1959 via Pindari (King Edward VII Stakes) and Above Suspicion (St James's Palace Stakes). But there was considerably more to the Queen's links with Ascot than the royal meeting.

Just days after her coronation in 1953 she went to Epsom to watch Aureole, bred by her late father, chase home Pinza in the Derby. One year on and Aureole, now a four-year-old, posted a hard-fought victory in the Hardwicke Stakes, having won the Coronation Cup on his previous start. Those victories teed him up for a tilt at the race named after the Queen's parents: the King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes in July.

Racegoers wait to get a picture of the Queen in the royal processionCredit: Edward Whitaker

Ascot's midsummer showpiece had been inaugurated three years earlier. The Queen was there in 1952 when Tulyar won for the Aga Khan; now she would savour her own triumph as Aureole repelled 16 opponents on heavy ground as 9-2 favourite. Aureole's victory ensured the Queen was leading owner in Britain that year for the first time.

Beyond those triumphs on the Ascot turf, memories of the Queen's involvement in racing will inevitably crystallise around her annual visits to the royal meeting. She routinely presented the winner's trophy after the Gold Cup, the Royal Hunt Cup and the Queen's Vase.

Royal Ascot was where the Queen was in her element. Invariably smiling as she assessed horses in the paddock, and animated far beyond the oft-stern facade she wore on public duty, she was in the company of like-minded folk. It was not so much a favoured pastime as a full-blooded embrace.

This, in turn, projected Royal Ascot in a unique light around the world. It depicted the Queen as monarch in a softer cast. She was at her leisure, and this prism offered visual affirmation of Sir Peter O'Sullevan's assertion that the Queen was "a very human being".

Mind you, she endured a difficult reintroduction when, after a one-year hiatus, Ascot reopened after a £200 million redevelopment project for the 2006 royal meeting. It was a comprehensive refurbishment: the main grandstand was razed and rebuilt, with the consequence that many of the old features – including the royal box – were repositioned.

The Queen's trial of patience started when there was no footman to open her carriage door as the royal procession came to a halt in the parade ring. She was then led to what her escorts believed was the lift up to her box, only for catering staff carrying trays of sandwiches to emerge from it.

By now anxious to get to her station, the Queen ascended that same lift to emerge in one of the new grandstand's matrix of gangways, where there was no sign of her security delegation. And, having finally reached the sanctuary of her box, she walked out to the balcony to savour the panoramic view but was unable to see over potted flowers atop the balcony's parapet. She was not amused.

So what will endure about Queen Elizabeth's relationship with Royal Ascot? For all the pageantry, the royal presence was as relaxed as it could have been. Security was barely evident: there were times when racegoers would be standing only yards from the Queen without realising it. Such relative lack of formality characterised the Queen's integration into the racing community. She was there first and foremost to savour the action.

This reached its apogee when Free Agent landed the Chesham Stakes in 2008. Television pictures showing the Queen's delight were dispatched to her colonies and beyond. Her beaming smile said it all; she practically punched the air in celebration.

But for the fact she was instantly recognisable she could have been any other owner caught in the moment when decorum is overwhelmed by a spontaneous outpouring of joy.

There can be little doubt that these highly personal images enhanced the Queen's standing in the eyes of her subjects, who were rarely afforded such snapshots in other avenues of her life.

They helped to diffuse the stuffy byproducts of protocol, which was in itself a double-edged sword. On the one hand, elusivity serves to maintain intrigue and awe. On the other it can make a monarch appear remote and aloof.

The concept of a distant monarch runs contrary to the grain of 21st century life. Images of the Queen at Ascot endowed a more 'human' dimension to the figurehead most often seen on ceremonial duty in distant outposts.

Yet what Royal Ascot did for the Queen's image, the Queen did so much more for the image of racing. The size of that debt will become all too evident in the years ahead.