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Chruchill (third from left) plays polo during his posting in India with the 4th Hussars

Winston Churchill is famous for his writing, painting, smoking and drinking. But the great statesman was also an accomplished horseman, says Herbert Spencer

Winston Churchill’s fondness for cognac, champagne and good cigars is legendary. Less well known is the formidable man’s lifelong love affair with horses. Riding and participating in equestrian sports were his favourite pastimes. He was a jockey in steeplechase and point-to-point races, rode to hounds, played polo for more than 40 years, became a successful racehorse owner, and hacked for pleasure and exercise until late in life. ‘There is something about the outside of a horse that is good for the inside of a man,’ he said.

Horses were in Winston Churchill’s blood. His father, third son of the fourth Duke of Marlborough, fox hunted and owned racehorses, once winning the Epsom Oaks. His American-born mother was the daughter of Leonard Jerome who founded New York’s Jockey Club and built its Jerome Racecourse – where the first polo match on grass in the US was played.

As a young officer cadet at Sandhurst in the 1890s, Churchill excelled at horsemanship, scoring 199 out of 200 points to come second in the military academy’s equestrian competition. While training for the cavalry at Aldershot, he learned polo and played on borrowed ponies, then begged his family for money to buy his own mounts. With a string of five, he began competing in tournaments at Aldershot and at London’s Hurlingham and Ranelagh clubs before his regiment, the 4th Hussars, was posted to India.

Polo was very much a part of life for cavalrymen of the British Raj, and Churchill’s early writings (and his later diaries) are peppered with references to the sport. After suffering a shoulder injury that plagued him for the rest of his life, he played with a special

harness that kept his stick arm close to his body, and still helped the 4th Hussars to win the Inter-Regimental tournament. Churchill also rode in steeplechases in India, wearing the family silks of chocolate and pink.

Once he left the army, and despite the demands of a political career and his writing, Churchill continued to play polo, often two or three times a week, at the London clubs and as far afield as Rugby. Ironically, however, he was once blackballed from becoming a playing member of Hurlingham because of his opposition to the government in power. His last chukkas were on the island of Malta in 1927.

After World War II, Churchill turned his attention to the track, becoming one of England’s most successful racehorse owners. His very first horse, Colonist II, proved a winner and Thoroughbreds from his studs won no fewer than 70 times in England, France and the USA. ‘Winnie wins!’ became a familiar cry among race-goers. He kept photographs of some of his favourite winners in his bedroom at Chartwell.

Winston Churchill was an indomitable warrior, one of history’s great statesmen and, as a man of letters, a Nobel Prize Laureate. Throughout it all, there were his beloved horses. ‘Don’t give your son money,’ he once advised. ‘As far as you can afford it give him horses… No hour of life is lost that is spent in the saddle.’