‘He loves being the showman’: former racehorse who refused to leave the starting stalls crowned champion over The King’s horse at Royal Windsor Horse Show

Show producer Hannah Horton has enjoyed a clean sweep in her classes on day one of Royal Windsor Horse Show, taking the Retraining of Racehorses (RoR) ridden championship with the Flat winner Migration.

Owned by Anthony and Georgina Andrews, Migration was gifted to them by the Gail Brown Racing Syndicate and last raced just over a year ago.

“He refused to come out of the starting stalls so they decided to retire him from racing there and then,” said Hannah, who took up the reins on him shortly afterwards and swiftly qualified him for the Horse of the Year Show (HOYS) just five months later.

Trained by David Menuisier, nine-year-old Migration won over £200,000 on the track.

“He coped really well with the atmosphere at HOYS and the bigger the show, the better he goes – he just loves being the showman,” said Hannah, who also clinched the working show horse class with Lady Madeleine Lloyd Webber’s home-bred mare Sixties Icon.

Reserve champion for The King’s horse at Royal Windsor

Taking the reserve spot was the Flat runner-up, The King’s First Receiver – dual champion here last year – with H&H columnist Katie Jerram-Hunnable. The eight-year-old gelding was bred by  The late Queen, becoming her final show ring winner before she died – and took the ridden RoR championship at HOYS just a month after her death in 2022.

Eve Nicholls won the National Hunt ridden class with her own Falloway Dubreau, whom she looked after when he raced under Fergal O’Brien. The 10-year-old gelding ran in point-to-points and over hurdles and retired from racing four years ago and is very special to Eve as she rode him out and led him up in all his races. The pair took the final HOYS qualifier of the year last season.

Finishing second was Katie Dashwood with the extremely successful dual RoR and riding horse Minella Rebellion.

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