Our sport was lauded as her favourite pastime. Now we must show we deserved it

Grief can bring the goodness through. That’s what the Queen’s passing has brought to her mourning nations these poignant last few days. That’s what she did to racing for generations. Now it’s up to us to reciprocate.

For sadness has not been the only feeling. Again and again there has been another one, the realisation of how lucky we have been. As programme after programme echoed this sentiment not just in Britain but around the world, the sense in racing was especially acute. Surely in racing, we were the luckiest of all.

Lucky to have had her from the very beginning. The young woman still in her Auxiliary Territorial Service uniform alongside her father at those Newmarket wartime Derbys; the new Queen watching Aureole run second at Epsom four days after the coronation, the accomplished horsewoman who galloped up the course on Ascot mornings and who sat calm and secure on her favourite mount Burmese when a gunman fired crowd and horse-startling shots at the Trooping of the Colour.

Seeing her up close at the races and even more so while on stable visits or looking at mares and foals at the Royal Studs, was to see someone who was not just enjoying themselves but was involved and informed in equal measure. For this was not just a racegoer, this was a participant. To think that only a fortnight ago, just two days before she died and only a few minutes before handling hardly easy interviews with the departing Mr Johnson and arriving Ms Truss, Her Majesty was talking to Clive Cox about her two-year-old who at Goodwood a few hours later would give her the last of all her winners.

We shared in her high days: Carrozza’s Oaks, Highclere’s Prix de Diane, Dunfermline’s two Classics in her Silver Jubilee year, and of course the royal delight of Estimate’s Gold Cup. But we knew also of her disasters: Doutelle bleeding to death in his box at Sandringham, the unhappy saga of West Ilsley and Dick Hern, the single-figure scores at the turn of the century and the near-and-yet-so-far Derby with Carlton House.

The old adage that 'All are equal on the turf and under it' doesn’t ring that true when you struggle out past the limos in the members' car park after a losing day, but there is a camaraderie in the central attraction of racing’s daily battle of hope against expectation.

Not for the Queen the massive bombast, the losing blame game, or the tap-the-nose conspiracy. She was in it because she loved it. Listening to stud manager Michael Oswald’s replies as he reported the latest foaling one night in the 1980s was to hear the answer to questions that could only come from someone with almost maternal concern for the process. Stable staff would relate the openness of their conversations, jockeys of the pride in wearing the silks, matched by the obvious enthusiasm of the owner.

Now all that is over and the downside is dreadful. The longer the experience, and I write as someone who waved a flag in the Mall at the coronation and cheered Aureole round Tattenham Corner in that Derby, the darker it seems without her. But sackcloth and ashes won’t help tomorrow morning and there is no evidence the Queen would have wanted us to be anything but positive. Indeed, two long trips around the racing parish last week suggested the absolute opposite.

“You had to be on the ball,” said William Haggas with a smile as he broke off from watching Baaeed put through his paces last Monday morning. “She knew her horses and could ask the questions.”

A couple of hours later John Gosden shook his head in rueful memory of the day he rang to say he felt the Ascot ground would be too soft to run the royal filly. “But I think those new drains are very good nowadays,” came the reply. It was a very clear instruction. The trainer walked the course. The filly ran and added to the Queen’s collection.

Last Wednesday the visits were to Marcus Tregoning and Willie Carson, ostensibly to film tributes to the late Sheikh Hamdan, but visits also adorned by royal recollections, absolutely none of which was doom-laden. Tregoning told of the Queen Mother teasing her daughter as he drove them across the gallops, and of another time when a horse got loose and the Queen made him drop her off and the morning traffic rushing to the motorway found itself held up by a somehow familiar figure in headscarf and Barbour jacket.

Carson has a host of memories but pulled out the surprise of how the Queen first came to hear of him. “She was in Stirling and visited my nan in the care home and asked who was that jockey in the picture,” said Willie. “'That’s my grandson', came the answer, 'Billy Carson'.” Willie only came later.

The talk of her was filled with wonder and gratitude, conscious of how fortunate we have been. For however earth-shaking, there was an inevitability about ours and the nation’s loss quite different to what happened to Henry and Heather de Bromhead when 13-year-old Jack de Bromhead’s life was so cruelly ended.

All the more reason to harness the goodwill garnered to tackle the one consistent grumble echoing around the racing parish. Very much in spite of our royal patronage, horseracing is in a more divided and perilous position both in its status in the British sporting scene and in its global impact than it has ever been since the second Elizabethan age started back in 1952. It will not be easy because British racing is set for self-destruction unless achievable ambitions and pathways can be agreed by competing parties.

But help could be at hand. The Queen left the Royal Studs in a better state than at any time in all her reign. The King is a considerable horseman but he is a doer not a watcher. He will now be a convener not a campaigner. He will look kindly on racing but not for long. If we want anything like his mother’s patronage, and indeed the support of any government and wider society, we had better pull ourselves together.

The world is full of sin, and while racing has its share, the Queen highlighted all that was great about it. For the last 12 days we have consoled ourselves with the thought that our sport was lauded as her favourite pastime. Now we must show that we deserved it.

Click here for a detailed look at the Queen's achievements in racing

In Tuesday's Racing Post