THE STADIUM ENJOYS ROYAL PATRONAGE: Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip visited Coral Brighton & Hove Stadium on July 16, 1962, and 10,000 cheering supporters gave her a fantastic ovation.
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IT was cheers, cheers and more cheers as the royal couple – The Queen and Prince Philip – left the Royal Pavilion for Hove on Monday July 16, 1962, and their entire six-and-a-half hour tour was a real “meet the people” occasion.
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The Queen and Prince Philip eventually departed Hove Town Hall to open the new-look shopping centre in George Street, Hove, en route to a massed display of youth organisations at Brighton & Hove Stadium.
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The Queen inspected the Queen’s Scouts and Guides, while Prince Philip had a cheerful word for Duke of Edinburgh’s Award winners – a youth awards programme founded in the United Kingdom in 1956 by Prince Philip that has subsequently expanded to 144 nations.
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Watched by a crowd of 10,000, the royal couple boarded an open vehicle to circuit Brighton & Hove Stadium, as all the youth organisations combined in a simultaneous cavalcade of exhibitions - military enactments ran carefully into athletic displays and dancing exhibitions merged with first-aid demonstrations.
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Then, as the band of the Royal Sussex Regiment played them out on their newly-presented silver drums, the Queen and her consort gave a final wave to the wildly-cheering youngsters as they vacated the arena to set off to Brighton Station for a return journey to Buckingham Palace.
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HRH Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, owned Playfield Royal, who was trained by Gordon Hodson at Hove in 1978/79, and the top-class stayer ran for the National Playing Fields Association (NPFA) charity.
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The National Playing Fields Association, initially set up in 1925 and founded by the Duke of York, later King George VI, and Prince Philip, the longest-serving royal consort in history, was president from 1947 until 2013 to be succeeded by his grandson William, Prince of Wales.
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Playfield Royal, a May 1976 brindled dog, contested all the major long-distance competitions and divided Jingling Star and Portland Dusty in the final of the 1979 Regency over 695 metres at Hove.
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In 1968 Prince Philip’s Camira Flash (100-8) replaced Not Flashing – disqualified for fighting in the semi-finals – in the final of the Greyhound Derby at White City and carved his name into the history books when beating Witches Smoke by a length in 28.89sec for the 525-yard course.
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HRH Prince Edward’s Druids Johno, a 4/7 favourite, was runner-up to Slippy Blue in the final of the 1990 Greyhound Derby at Wimbledon and subsequently locked horns with the great Ravage Again in the final of the Etherington Golden Sprint over 285 metres at Hove.
