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After a carriage procession appearance on Wednesday, Sophie, Duchess of Edinburgh,<\/strong> returned to Royal Ascot for another day of horse-racing on Thursday. This time she skipped the procession, but she did bring along a special guest, her 92-year-old father, Christopher Rhys-Jones.<\/strong> Rhys-Jones, a retired auto executive, donned a gray top hat and joined his daughter in the royal enclosure where they stood arm-in-arm and posed for photographers.<\/p>\n Along with Sophie\u2019s husband, Prince Edward,<\/strong> they were present as King Charles III<\/strong> won his first race of the week. The king entered the horse Desert Hero, ridden by jockey Tom Marquand,<\/strong> in the George V Handicap, where he came in first, and was awarded a trophy by his cousin, the Duke of Kent.<\/strong><\/p>\n After the race, his niece Zara Tindall<\/strong> spoke with reporters<\/a> about the symbolism. \u201cIt\u2019s bittersweet, isn\u2019t it?\u201d she said. \u201cTo think how proud and excited our grandmother would have been, the queen would have been. But to have a winner for Charles and Camilla, to keep that dream alive, was incredible. And what a race, aside [from] all of that.\u201d<\/p>\n As on Tuesday and Wednesday, the king and Queen Camilla<\/strong> led the carriage procession, where they were joined by horse trainer Mark Prescott<\/strong> and the Earl of Snowdon,<\/strong> the son of Princess Margaret. Princess Anne<\/strong> and her husband Sir Tim Laurence<\/strong> rode in the second carriage along with Qatari royal Sheikh Hamid bin Abdullah Al Thani<\/strong> and the king\u2019s former equerry, Lord Soames of Fletching.<\/strong> Princess Margaret\u2019s daughter Lady Sarah Chatto<\/strong> and her husband Daniel Chatto<\/strong> rode in the third carriage along with Camilla\u2019s companion Baroness Carlyn Chisholm of Owlpen<\/strong> and her husband, Colin Chisholm.<\/strong><\/p>\n Sophie doesn\u2019t often appear with her father at royal events, but in 2021, she spoke about her excitement when she was able to receive a coronavirus vaccine. During an event later that year, Sophie talked about grieving her mother, Mary, who died in 2005. \u201cTo this day, I miss her very much,\u201d she said<\/a>. \u201cThere are moments where I hear some music she loved or I do something I know she\u2019d have wanted to hear about, which makes her early departure very hard.\u201d<\/p>\n
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