HRH Princess Royal attends World Horse Welfare Day at Guards Polo Club
By Diana Butler
Guards Polo Club hosted the third World Horse Welfare Day this Thursday, attended by HRH The Princess Royal. It would be fabulous if you could feature this in your publication. I will send a link to the images in a separate email.
World Horse Welfare hosted its third Polo Day at Guards Polo Club, attended by the charity’s President HRH The Princess Royal. This Royal VIP joined the charity’s Chairman Barry Johnson and more than 190 guests for lunch in the Clubhouse before moving to the grandstands to watch the semi-finals of the fast-paced Indian Empire Shield.
This match saw a win for Spencer McCarthy’s Emlor team and he received the World Horse Welfare Trophy from Barry and Carolyn Johnson. Spencer’s teammate Manuel Fernandez Llorente was named The Polo Magazine’s Most Valuable Player and Manuel’s nine-year-old gelding, Agus received the World Horse Welfare Best Playing Pony Prize. All the prizes were provided by La Martina and Guards Polo Club.
Before the match and charity auction, which raised more than £20,000 for the charity, HRH The Princess Royal revealed her love of the club, saying “It’s a lovely excuse to come back to a place where I spent a huge amount of time as a child!” She then went on to talk in detail about World Horse Welfare’s work, including its pilot programme with racing’s official charity Retraining of Racehorses (RoR) to retrain and find loving new homes for six former racers in a project fully-funded by RoR and launched earlier this year. To highlight the charity’s work in this field, World Horse Welfare’s first retrained racehorse, Ollie, made a guest appearance, accompanied by his friend and travelling companion Billy, a Shetland pony.
Roly Owers, Chief Executive of World Horse Welfare, also reminded his audience that earlier in the year HRH Princess Royal had hosted a charity reception at Buckingham Palace where she had urged her charities to focus on three things: governance, fundraising and collaboration. He went on to highlight the charity’s work in these three key areas, including its invaluable work with the Animal Health Trust on laminitis research and urged all horse owners in the room to participate (http://www.careaboutlaminitis.org.uk/).