“Horses are the greatest levelers in the world,” Queen Elizabeth II once said. For the monarch who exemplified regal dignity and unflagging duty, her time spent with horses reflected a side largely unseen by the public: an owner who was earthy, detail-oriented, and decisive. Since the announcement in early January that Ian Balding had died at age 87, I’ve been thinking of how much horse breeding, training, and racing occupied the late Queen’s life, and wondering about the current status and future prospects for a royal tradition stretching back to the sixteenth century. Balding was a mainstay for her, training her horses from 1964 to his retirement in 2002.

I’ve shared my knowledge with Royals Extra readers about three other important figures in the Queen’s thoroughbred enterprises: Sir Michael Oswald, the longtime manager of the Royal Stud on the monarch’s Sandringham Estate in Norfolk (Inside the Royal Stud at Sandringham), The 7^th Earl of Carnarvon (“Porchey”), the Queen’s long-serving racing manager (In its final season, The Crown returns to the Queen’s friendship with “Porchey,” her racing manager for thirty years), and Monty Roberts, the California cowboy who taught the Queen his techniques for non-violent horse training (Thinking about “The Cowboy and The Queen”).

Balding’s obituaries emphasized his preeminence as the trainer who guided Mill Reef, owned by the wealthy American patrician Paul Mellon, to victory in Britain’s most prestigious races. His relationship with the Queen was another source of pride for Balding. He gave her the satisfaction of watching her horses win at the track, as well as the pleasure of inspecting them in their stalls at his Park House Stables and seeing them train for competition at his Kingsclere property on the Hampshire Downs.

In late March 2009 I spent the better part of a day with Balding at Kingsclere, where he described the Queen’s interest in the training process, which would last until her death in September 2022. He shared amusing as well as revealing anecdotes about the monarch and Prince Philip, whose curiosity about thoroughbreds proved short-lived. More recently I’ve heard some encouraging news about the way King Charles III and Queen Camilla are managing their thoroughbreds. But there is little indication that Prince William and Catherine, The Princess of Wales, have much if any interest in breeding and racing, which raises questions about its future with the royal family.