September 1976 – Freddie Mercury with Mary Austin, Surrey, London, UK
Queen at the Kempton Park Racecourse at Sunbury-on-Thames for the ‘A Day At The Races’ album press launch. The event features a series of horse races and the winner of the main race, an obstacle course, receives £ 3,000 donated by EMI and Queen manager John Reid.
Freddie, Brian, Roger and John all placed bets on the same horse (they didn’t reveal this to each other). The name of the horse they all placed bets on was ‘Lanzarote’ ridden by Champion Jockey John Francombe (he’s the third most successful National Hunt jump jockey of all time).
Lanzarote won! Yay!
Five days before, ‘A Day At The Races’ was released (December 1976) Queen found out their album pre-sales were more than half a million, the highest orders EMI had ever received for any album (at that time)
