Rare Books

"Ex-Libris: Raymond Guest M.F.H. Foxhunting Photo Album: Rock Hill Hounds, Virginia Two Good Days in December 1939"

w/ 22 b&w photos suitable for framing

Raymond Guest

1939

Privately Printed

9 1/2" x 7 5/8"

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Raymond Richard Guest OBE (November 25, 1907 – December 31, 1991) was an American businessman, thoroughbred racehorse owner and polo player. From 1965 to 1968, he was United States Ambassador to Ireland.

In the United States, members of his mother's family have been major figures in the sport of thoroughbred racing for many decades. In England, Raymond Guest's sister, Diana Guest Manning, owned and raced a horse she named Be My Guest who was a conditions race winner in England and Ireland as well as the Leading sire in Great Britain and Ireland in 1982. Raymond Guest also owned thoroughbreds which he raced in England, Ireland, France and the United States. In Ireland his flat racehorses were trained by Vincent O'Brien and his National Hunt horses by Dan Moore. His racing colours were chocolate, pale blue hoops and cap. Guest is one of only four owners to win both The Derby and the Grand National, the others being King Edward VII, when Prince of Wales, Dorothy Paget and Jim Joel.

The British flat racing Champion Owner in 1968, among Guest's successful horses in flat racing were Larkspur, winner of the 1962 Epsom Derby; Sir Ivor, winner of the 1968 2,000 Guineas, Epsom Derby and the Washington, D.C. International.

Raymond Guest also owned steeplechase racers. His most outstanding was L'Escargot, a National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame inductee who was voted the 1969 U.S. Steeplechase Horse of the Year and who then raced in England where he won the Cheltenham Gold Cup in 1970 and 1971 and the Grand National in 1975.

In the United States, Raymond Guest was a member of The Jockey Club and voted President of the Virginia Thoroughbred Association in 1958. The best horse to carry his Powhatan Stable colours in American flat racing was Tom Rolfe, winner of the 1965 Preakness Stakes who earned American Champion 3-Year-Old Male Horse honors.

Both he and his brother Winston Frederick Churchill Guest were polo players. Raymond Guest twice won the U.S. Open as part of the Templeton team, and was posthumously inducted into the Museum of Polo and Hall of Fame in 2006.


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