He may not be quite as keen on the sport as his late mother, but by attending the prestigious Royal Ascot race meeting this week for the first time as ruling monarch, King Charles III is maintaining a long and proud tradition.
Last year, Charles and Camilla led the Royal Procession at Ascot while the Queen watched the action from home. They were joined by Prince Edward and Sophie, Duchess of Edinburgh, Princess Anne, Zara and Mike Tindall and Princess Beatrice and her husband Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi. This year Charles will be there with the Queen Consort as more than simply a stand-in for his late mother.
Indeed, their Majesties are likely to be at Ascot for much of this week and are expected to watch their runner, Saga, in the Wolferton Stakes at 5.35pm today.
In fact, without the patronage of the Kings of England down the centuries, we probably wouldn't have regulated, organised horse racing - or at least not at the same level as we have it today. Back in the Middle Ages, English monarchs were keen on 'running horses', but it was during the reign of Henry VIII in the first half of the 16th century that formal race meetings are thought to have begun.
Usually remembered as the King with a penchant for divorcing his wives, Henry was also a skilled horseman who rode dressage. He set up Royal studs for breeding and also had his own racing stable at Greenwich which housed up to 200 horses.
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He imported mares for breeding from overseas and banned the export of horses from England. Henry's state breeding programme wasn't just about sport: massive losses of horses during the Wars of the Roses meant England had to build its equine stock up again in case of future wars.
Racing received a further boost during the reign of James I, who, while out hawking in the early 1600s, 'discovered' Newmarket, which became the world's headquarters of Flat racing. James built himself a royal residence in the town and established his court there for long periods. His son, Charles I, was even more interested in racing than his father but after he lost power - and his head - in the English Civil War, racing faced an uncertain future.
In 1654, under the puritanical rule of Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell, the sport of kings, associated not just with the monarchy but with merrymaking and cavalier get-togethers, was seen as a threat to the authorities and actually banned. Furthermore James I's Newmarket home was almost completely demolished.
Racing enjoyed a glorious comeback though when the 'Merry Monarch' Charles II was restored to the throne in 1660. The last King Charles didn't just enjoy watching but competed in races too.
In 1671, he won the Newmarket Town Plate, a race he'd established in 1666 and which endures to this day. Another famous race, the Nell Gwynn Stakes, run each year in April, and contested by three-year-old fillies, was named after the King's mistress. Newmarket's Rowley Mile was named after his hack. Charles built a new palace at Newmarket on the site of his late grandfather's, which he visited twice yearly.
Successive kings - and queens - kept the Royal patronage going. William III reformed the Royal Stud and was the first monarch to employ a racing manager, appointing Tregonwell Frampton as his Keeper of the Running Horses. Frampton, known as "The Father of the Turf", also trained horses for a succession of monarchs from the second half of the 1600s to the 1720s, living to the ripe old age of 86. In 1711, Queen Anne introduced racing to Ascot, a course the monarch still owns.
In 1788 the fun-loving and extravagant Prince of Wales, later King George IV, became the first Royal owner to win the Epsom Derby, racing's most famous Flat race, with his colt Sir Thomas. But Prinny, as he was known, fell out with the Jockey Club, the sport's controlling body, three years later when his jockey was accused of pulling a Royal horse at Newmarket to get better odds for its next race which it won easily.
And even when Kings haven't been overly enthusiastic about racing, they've felt obliged to go through the motions. The 'Sailor King' William IV used to stand at the front of the royal box with his back turned to the action. When he was asked which Royal horses should run at Goodwood he replied: "Why, the whole squad, first-raters and gunboats; some of them I suppose must win."
But probably the greatest lover of the Turf, and undoubtedly the most successful Royal owner, was King Edward VII, aka Bertie.
The cigar-smoking son of Queen Victoria won no fewer than three Derbys - in 1896 with Persimmon when he was Prince of Wales, in 1900 with Diamond Jubilee and, in 1909, with Minoru when he was King. That made him the first, and to date only reigning monarch to win the Blue Riband event.
The Royal winners were each time greeted with scenes of great jubilation.
As one newspaper reported after Persimmon's victory: "When the result was made known, everybody seems to have cheered and shouted himself hoarse, while the reported destruction of headgear was on so extensive a scale that a considerable stimulus must accrue to the hat-making industry."
Bertie also won the Grand National in 1900, the year his top Flat horse Diamond Jubilee landed the Triple Crown. Appropriately enough, the King passed away in 1910 just hours after one of his horses had won at Kempton.
While his father had plenty of luck at Epsom, Edward VII's son, King George V, had the misfortune to have his horse Anmer involved in one of the most tragic incidents in racing history. In the 1913 Derby, suffragette Emily Davison ran onto the course and attempted to seize the reins of the King's horse after the field turned round Tattenham Corner.
Horse, jockey and suffragette crashed to the ground, and while the horse and jockey escaped serious harm, Davison died from her injuries.
There was a much happier moment for George in 1928 when his filly Scuttle won the 1000 Guineas. His son King George VI, the late Queen's father, enjoyed even more success. In 1942, he was the country's leading owner, winning four of the five wartime Classics. He won another Classic in 1946.
And Queen Elizabeth, as we know, was an enthusiastic owner during her reign.
She may never have won the Derby - the closest she came was when her colt Aureole finished second in the week of her Coronation in 1953 - but Her Majesty did have more than 1,800 winners over the course of her life, with perhaps the crowning glory being Estimate's emotional win in the 2013 Ascot Gold Cup.
Which brings us to King Charles III.
As Prince of Wales, he made his debut as an amateur jockey in a charity race at Plumpton, in Sussex, in 1980. More than 5,000 spectators turned up to see the heir to the throne in action. Charles led on the first circuit but eventually finished second on his horse Long Wharf and a few days later came fourth in another race at Sandown.
His riding career lasted all of 14 months and, although he did manage two second places from six rides, he never rode a winner and was unseated from his mount Good Prospect when he rode at the 1981 Cheltenham Festival. "I hadn't realised until I did it just what unbelievable hard work it is," he recalled in 2017. "You go to the races, you watch people gallop past and you think, 'Oh, splendid', but you don't understand until you do it, what you have to get on with."
While he would never claim to be the world's greatest jockey, Charles fared much better in polo, playing the elite equestrian sport competitively at a high level for many years and even representing his country. He only retired from the saddle when he was 57.
Clearly Charles had more passion for the sport they call "hockey on horseback" than he did for racing, but will things change now he is King? When the Queen died last September, there were concerns the new monarch wouldn't be as committed.
Indeed, when 14 of Her Majesty's horses were put up for sale last autumn it sent a shiver through the world of racing.But although the Royal stable won't be as large as it was, it appears the commitment to support racing is still very much there. The cause is undoubtedly helped by the fact Queen Camilla has always been a racing fan.
In January, the only horse the King has in training in Australia, Chalk Stream, won a Listed race. Trainer Chris Waller revealed Charles sent a "beautiful email" to him after the win. In May, just a few days after the Coronation, the King and Queen followed another Royal tradition by visiting Newmarket to inspect the horses they have in training.
One of the trainers on the Royal roster is Sir Mark Prescott, who was sent two fillies by the Royal couple. "It's a great honour for Newmarket for four of its trainers to be training for the King and Queen," he said. "The history of Newmarket and training for the Royal family is a very long one. Richard Marsh, for instance, trained all three of Edward VII's Derby winners."
Prescott has trained at the historic Heath House stables since 1970 and points out there's a strong link with the yard and the town's Royal heritage.
"Tregonwell Frampton trained on the premises for five monarchs. When you're looking back at the association between Newmarket and Royalty he was the key man."
Unlike his mother, who missed just three Epsom Derbys since first attending as a princess in 1946, King Charles opted to spend Derby Day this year walking in Romania.
But his continued patronage of Newmarket and his attendance at Royal Ascot - a course which he also happens to own - shows that racing's long and illustrious ties with Royalty are in no danger of being severed.