Opening photo: Crystal Ocean in the ‘Prince of Wales’ Stakes (2019)

While other girls grew up hearing the cheering for one or another football team, I was brought up hearing my father’s excitement about horse racing. Among many other races, every year, he would fly to Paris to attend the Prix de L’Arc de Triomphe at Longchamp. One year, he actually hired a private jet to spoil my beautiful mother and their closest friends to go to the iconic event.

Years later, I was privileged enough to be at Ascot when Frankie Dettori went through the card in 1996; watched him race home to victory twice at The Qatar Prix de L’Arc de Triomphe, once at Chantilly in 2017and then in 2018 back at Longchamp.

So I was honoured to be invited to the Longines’ Best Horse Race and Best Racehorse Awards a couple

of weeks ago. Longines has for a long time led the field as time keepers to the wonderful and exciting world of sport. You only have to delve in to their incredible history to see that not only they developed aviators’ watches and cockpit instruments but also created precision stop watches for the Olympic Games, thus ensuring athletes’ performances were accurately recorded. Longines has come to represent style, grace, beauty and unrivalled accuracy.

On Wednesday January 22, Longines and its long-time partner the International Federation of Horseracing Authorities (IFHA), were delighted to host the 2019 Longines World’s Best Horserace and Longines World’s Best Horse Race ceremony at The Landmark Hotel in London. The ceremony, now in its seventh year, honoured the three highest-rated horses in the Longines World’s Best Racehorse Rankings as well as the Longines World’s Best Horse Race.

This has been a very exciting year in Horse Racing, so exciting in fact, that three thoroughbreds shared the title of 2019 Longines World’s Best Racehorse: Crystal Ocean, Enable and Waldgeist, while the Longines Best Horse Race Award was presented to the Qatar Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe for a remarkable fourth time.

www.longines.co.uk