King Charles is a keen fan of horse racing (Image: Getty Images)
King Charles offered a royal correspondent a vital piece of advice – yet she admits the mere thought of his guidance was “painful”. Beneath his seemingly austere exterior, the monarch possesses a sharp sense of humour, along with a host of passions beyond his official duties.
Chief among these is horse riding. Charles was an enthusiastic amateur jockey in his younger years, competing in six races between 1980 and 1981.
This colourful chapter of his past led him to share some pearls of wisdom with The Sunday Times’ Royal Editor Roya Nikkhah. Next weekend she is racing at York racecourse to raise funds for Macmillan Cancer Support, a charity of which the King is patron.
She described the training as “the most challenging, intense experience” of her life, having been preparing in Lambourn, Berkshire – the very same location where the King honed his skills in his youth.
When Charles visited York Hospital to officially open the new Sir Robert Ogden Macmillan Cancer Centre, he took the opportunity to pass on some royal fitness tips ahead of her big day in the saddle. Some proved rather more welcome than others, reports the Daily Mirror.
King Charles gave a royal fitness tip (Image: Mike Egerton for The Jockey Club/PA Wire)
Writing in The Sunday Times, Roya said: “When I told the King that many of my early mornings – alarm at 4am, 90-minute drive and riding by 7am – are currently spent training on the Lambourn gallops, his eyes lit up. I remember doing that, long ago. Keep going with the training.”
He then proceeded to deliver his royal fitness tip: “‘You’re riding so short [stirrups], it’s about the most exhausting thing I’ve ever done.
“So what I found, was to really improve your fitness and to get your legs really strong, [for] riding short – the best thing for it is to ride a bicycle without the saddle, no seat. It really works.’ Just the thought was painful.”
Roya confessed she had yet to put Charles’s advice into practice, though she did successfully pass the demanding ‘jockey fitness test’.
King Charles’s tip sounded ‘very painful’ (Image: Mike Egerton for The Jockey Club/PA Wire)
On Saturday (June 13), rather than attending Trooping the Colour, she will be competing over a mile and a furlong alongside 10 fellow amateur jockeys in the Macmillan Ride of their Lives charity race.
Meanwhile, Prince Harry‘s long-awaited reunion with his father could be on the horizon when he travels to the UK for an Invictus Games event this summer – though only under certain conditions.
Royal author Ingrid Seward told the Mirror that the King could still extend an invitation to Harry, Meghan and their children Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet, aged seven and four, provided Harry is prepared to agree to and abide by specific terms.
She said: “The only place that really I think they could meet if the King is to get to know or at least see his grandchildren, is at Balmoral.
“It’s the only time the King has time and the Sussexes could be accommodated there because there’s lots of cottages on the Estate.”