'We talked and talked. She makes you feel so relaxed in her company'

In 2011 Willie Snaith told Julian Muscat about the pride he felt to be a royal jockey.

Very few outside her residences spend as much time with the Queen as do people in racing. Every royal trainer hosts the monarch at least once a year, and there are further rendezvous at the races.

Since racing is her primary source of relaxation, the Queen is invariably in good spirits. On these occasions her informality is what strikes those she mingles with. Her informed, easy-going manner certainly made an impression on Willie Snaith, who donned the royal silks aboard Landau in the 1954 Derby.

At the time Snaith, who rode at light weights, was second jockey to Sir Gordon Richards at the Sir Noel Murless stable. Although he was accustomed to the Queen’s annual visit to see her horses at Warren Place, he didn’t get to meet the Queen properly until she presented him with an MBE for services to racing in 2005.

“I cried my eyes out afterwards,” Snaith reflects at his home in Newmarket, from where he can almost see his former workplace. “I walked up to her, bowed, and said: ‘Good afternoon, Your Majesty.’ And she said: ‘Good afternoon to you. It has been a very long time since I last saw you’.”

In Tuesday's Racing Post

Their last encounter had come 51 years earlier, when Snaith steered Landau to victory in the Sussex Stakes. A framed photograph at his home commemorates the jockey being presented to the monarch at Goodwood after what he describes as the highlight of his career.

Landau and Snaith became inextricably linked in 1954. The royal colt was bred in the purple: by Derby winner Dante out of fillies’ Triple Crown heroine Sun Chariot, whom the future queen saw on an early visit to Newmarket with her father in 1942, when she was 15. Landau proved good enough to warrant his place in the Derby, with Richards in the saddle.

“Sir Gordon then got hurt in a fall at Sandown,” Snaith says, “and I was given the ride. It was a wonderful gesture of Sir Noel to put me up. I had eight Derby rides in all, but Landau was my first.”

Snaith vividly recalls his excitement as he rounded Tattenham Corner, from where he advanced towards the leaders early in the straight. “I thought I had a right chance, but at the two-furlong pole the other horses just came past me,” he says. Leading the chase was Never Say Die, a first Derby winner for Lester Piggott, then aged 18.

The Derby was some experience, but that was far from the last of it.

With Richards again unavailable, Snaith was summoned to partner Landau in the Washington DC International at Laurel, in Maryland.

“Well, it was a great honour to represent the Queen’s colours abroad,” he reflects. “I’d never been to America, and before I left I was told to make sure I packed my dinner suit because I’d been invited to appear on the Ed Sullivan Show [a forerunner of the Larry King Show that ran coast to coast].”

In the event Landau set a sedate gallop, and when his stamina ebbed he was swallowed up in the straight. “It was a wonderful trip even though Landau didn’t run that well,” he says.

“Sir Noel was there, and so was [Royal Studs manager] Captain Charles Moore. On the first morning we all sat down for breakfast with the other stable lads. Sir Noel and I winked at each other as the captain ordered his breakfast – he was a very upright man from the Grenadier Guards – but he seemed to enjoy it.”

Willie Snaith: former jockey arrived in Newmarket in 1946 and died in 2019 at the age of 91Credit: Chris Bourchier

As Snaith, 83, rolls back the years there’s a permanent – if largely toothless – smile on his sunny face. It is quickly apparent that he traded on cheek in his youth, a fact readily confirmed by his wife Silvia, daughter of trainer Bobby Jones and with whom Snaith will celebrate 60 years of robust marriage in September.

Born and raised in Newcastle, Snaith arrived in Newmarket in 1946 and never left. The couple now live on the southern fringe of Warren Hill; their abiding love of racing is manifest in the twin sets of binoculars perched by the window, from where they often watch morning exercise. The Heath stretching out before them is where they first met.

Their passion for the sport, which brought Snaith into the Queen’s orbit, will never abate. “We love each other the best,” Snaith says of his wife, “but we have separate beds because in my dreams I’m back riding in races. I throw myself about all over the place when I’m asleep.”

When he retired in 1972 he’d racked up more than 900 winners in England and 50 abroad, most of the latter in his nine-year winter spell in India, where he rode for the Maharaja of Gwalior. Yet he was fortunate to survive a terrible fall at Lingfield 40 years ago, when he punctured a lung.

Snaith could not sit still in retirement. For the next 16 years he rode out for Henry Cecil, successor to Murless at Warren Place, partnering fillies’ Triple Crown heroine Oh So Sharp in her routine exercise. They were happy days, and even when the spores from hay and straw played havoc with his asthma, obliging him to give up stable life altogether, Snaith became a tour guide taking visitors around Newmarket.

When he mentioned this to the Queen at Buckingham Palace, she wanted to know more. “I told her where I took the visitors, and what I showed them. She was so interested that we talked and talked. She makes you feel so relaxed in her company. In that way she is just like her daughter.”

Snaith met Princess Anne at Fakenham three years ago for the running of the Racing Welfare Willie Snaith Lifetime in Racing Hurdle. The Princess Royal was there to support the Injured Jockeys Fund, of which she is a patron. “She’s a real charmer, that one,” Snaith says of the princess. “Top to bottom, she’s full of fun.”

Snaith’s loyalty to Warren Place is such that he revelled in Frankel’s 2,000 Guineas triumph. And he is quick to defend Cecil’s decision to bypass the Derby. “In his interviews on television Henry always told people to be careful about Frankel running at Epsom. He’s a great trainer, and if he doesn’t think it’s a good idea, I’m sure he’s right.”

Besides, Snaith’s interest in the Derby allows the story to turn full circle. His son, John, rides out for Sir Michael Stoute, who will saddle Carlton House to great expectations on Saturday. And as Ryan Moore makes his way to post, Snaith is bound to reflect on how he donned those utterly distinctive silks aboard Landau 57 years ago. Few will be cheering harder for a royal victory on Saturday.

Carlton House finished third in the 2011 Derby. Frankel did not go the Derby route but went on to win a further eight races in his brilliant unbeaten career. Willie Snaith died in 2019 at the age of 91.

In Tuesday's Racing Post