Royal Ascot promises to even more hectic than usual for David Howden.
There will be four days at the most prestigious meeting of the British Flat season, hosting around 40 guests each afternoon, wrapped around a flying visit to Dublin on the Friday to watch the British & Irish Lions rugby team warm up for their summer tour to Australia with a dust-up against the Pumas of Argentina.
It is a dream agenda for any sports fan and that includes the man who has built one of the world’s most successful insurance companies, one of Ascot’s three official partners – Longines and QIPCO are the other two – as well as being principal partner and front-of-shirt-sponsor on the red shirts of the iconic rugby team.
There should be a sprinkle of runners and, with luck, maybe a winner to cheer home up the Ascot home straight.
The schedule would suit the stamina reserves of a contender for the Queen Alexandra Stakes but is unlikely to daunt 61-year-old Howden, who exudes an enthusiasm and energy that would impress the Duracell Bunny.
As well as Ascot and the Lions, Howden now supports racing in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Australia, via Victoria Racing Club, while his rugby involvement also includes grassroots investment with sponsorship of the famous Melrose Sevens and Rosslyn Park National Schools Sevens tournaments plus – something he is particularly pleased about – the backing of the inaugural Women’s British Lions tour to New Zealand in 2027.
Literally closer to home, Howden has revived the Cornbury House Horse Trials to the universal acclaims of the eventing world, as well as launching young rider and horse talent academies.
Then there is the Thoroughbred Aftercare Programme (TAP), created by Howden to increase post-racing opportunities for the 7,500 thoroughbreds that leave the sport annually.
It is an exhausting list just to type and incontrovertible evidence that Howden is a man who doesn’t just talk about it – he does it.
Speaking at Cornbury House, the palatial 5,500-acre Oxfordshire working estate he leases from Lord Rotherwick and which is also home to a deer herd, a rare breed collection which includes Long Horn cattle, Hampshire Down sheep and Middle White pigs and hosts the annual Wilderness music and arts festival, Howden repeatedly returns to two words: create and build.
They encapsulate his business philosophy and are now driving a racing involvement that last year saw him win his first race at the royal meeting when the John and Thady Gosden-trained Running Lion captured the Group 2 Duke of Cambridge Stakes.
“racing is about the enjoyment”
Howden says: ‘‘The reception I got at Royal Ascot was phenomenal. I could hardly walk without someone stopping me, with loads of people I didn’t even know saying well done.
‘‘I run an insurance business, which I am equally passionate about, but racing is about the enjoyment. It doesn’t mean I don’t want to succeed – unless you have drive and ambition you are not going to get what you want. But it is definitely done for pleasure and excitement.
‘‘One of the wonderful things about horseracing is the number of people that are involved in success. When you win, you win with many. From David to the jockeys, trainers, your family and then the crowd.’’
David is David Redvers, who has been instrumental in Howden’s foray into the racing parish, which currently see him own 17 broodmares, nine foals, eight yearlings and 18 horses in training spread across Britain, Australia and Ireland.
The pair met in 2018 after Howden bought a lot at a charity event at the Dragon School in Oxford for a morning on the Newmarket gallops and day at the 2,000 Guineas.
The afternoon may have ended in disappointment for Redvers when Roaring Lion, owned by his boss Sheikh Fahad, was only fifth to Saxon Warrior in the Classic, but Howden, who was accompanied by wife Fiona and daughters Jemima, Kitty and Talitha, was captivated.
“it is very important to deal with someone you can trust”
The late Roaring Lion, who went on to finish third in the Derby before embarking on a Group 1-winning spree, was the sire Howden used after Redvers bought him Bella Nouf along with two other mares at the Tattersalls Mares’ Sale later that year. The result was Running Lion.
Howden recalls: ‘‘It was that weekend that we really got the hook for it. Roaring Lion has always been a horse that is special to me because he is part of the reason that I got into racing in the first place.
‘‘I love racing, but it is not my business, so it is very important to deal with someone who you like and have a good rapport with but also someone you can trust.
‘‘David absolutely fits the bill. He knows what I am trying to achieve and what I am looking for. You build that relationship over time and having David’s Tweenhills Stud relatively close to here is nice because we can see the foals together.’’
Howden was not a complete racing novice before meeting Redvers. He was at school with trainer Emma Lavelle’s brothers, Edward and Jonathon. They used to take him racing while Howden’s sister Miranda always had an interest in horses even though his attention was more focused on motorbikes.
But one of Howden’s first brushes with the sport was not so positive.
‘‘I had a very early racing experience which was poor, to say the least, and my mother would probably categorise it even worse,’’ Howden says. ‘‘I did a bit of betting. I was clearly not very good at choosing my horses in those days and ran up a bit of a debt with the local bookies. I was probably 17 at the time.
‘‘It got to the point where it was not repayable, and I had to go cap in hand to my mother. I think my sister Miranda actually said, ‘You had better help him pay it off as I am not sure the bookie will leave him with all his fingers if he doesn’t settle his debt’.
Fortunately, his fingers remained intact but another far more serious fracture was one of two early-life experiences that had a profound effect.
The first was the death of his father when he was aged seven. With his mother facing crippling death duties, the family’s comfortable home in the south had to be sold before moving for a time to Thoralby in the Yorkshire Dales.
“If you can have setbacks and create opportunity out of adversity it makes you a better, stronger person”
The second came on the sports field aged 15 when, playing rugby on the left wing for his school, Howden broke his back.
He recalls: ‘‘I was a very keen rugby player and a high jumper. I got a bad tackle, hit the ground and broke my back. I was very lucky to have a very successful spinal-fusion operation in the Nuffield Hospital in Oxford, but it put paid to contact sports and really meant I did not want to go back to school because I was a lot better at sport than academia.
‘‘At the time it seems a bit of a disaster but when you look back you think it was quite formative, as was losing my father and things getting tougher.
‘‘If you can have setbacks and create opportunity out of adversity it makes you a better, stronger person. That entrepreneurial spirit of wanting to build your own business and create something all comes out of those early learnings.’’
With A Levels shelved and university ambitions ditched, there was an interview to potentially join the army, but ultimately Howden started work in the City at 16, joining Alexander Howden Insurance Brokers. It was not a family firm but had been originally set up by his great, great grandfather.
That was 1981. By 1988, Howden had set up his own firm. After being forced to sell that in 1991 by a majority outside shareholder, he then set up his current business in 1994 with ‘‘three colleagues and a dog’’.
“I wanted to create something with a different DNA and culture and around the people in it. Employee ownership was the route.”
Howden ended up with the dog when his first wife left him. It was a handsome Weimaraner called Flight, the name Howden gave his Ollie Sangster-trained filly who finished second in the 1,000 Guineas last month.
‘‘I went for a walk in Scotland in the mountains and thought about what I wanted to do,” he says, recalling the days before he started his insurance company. “I thought I want to create something with a different DNA and culture and around the people in it. Employee ownership was the route.
‘‘Today we have around 22,000 employees and 6,000 of those have equity in the business. We are one of the UK’s biggest employer-owned businesses and that culture of building something and people being involved takes us back to the breeding because I like that creation of things, of people being part of it and the feeling you are building something.’’
One thing Howden has certainly built is a strong relationship with Ascot since his company became an official partner in 2021.
In fact, he has become one of the stand-out sponsors of the sport outside of its traditional constituencies of bookmakers and bloodstock-related businesses.
He believes, for a partnership to be truly authentic, you must be fully emersed in it, hence he will be in Australia for the duration of Lions tour.
Howden says: ‘‘I talk with the Lions about how we need to earn the right for our name to be on the jersey. If you are a rugby fan and you have Howden on there that’s okay, but if you think Howden has nothing to do with rugby and doesn’t care, it is almost more irritating than it is pleasurable.
“The same thing goes for racing. Yes, I am passionate about it so hopefully people believe I am genuine when I am sponsoring it, but for the business there must also be a financial reason to do it.”
Howden believes his background gives him a clear insight into what a sponsor wants, something he is not convinced all British racecourses grasp.
He has used this insight to attract a wide-ranging array of big-name backers not necessarily associated with equine sport to the Cornbury House Horse Trials, including Accenture, Aston Martin, Bank of America, Jetfly, JP Morgan, Mishcon de Reya, Novidea and The White Company.
Howden says: ‘‘I have the advantage of being passionate about the sport, be it racing or eventing, but also being a businessman. Having that double lens allows me to think what it is I want to get out of sponsorship.
“What’s the experience you are going to give your sponsors that they are going to say this is something special?”
‘‘Maybe a bookie just wants their name up there as much as possible but for a lot of sponsors it won’t be about that. It will be about the experience, how they associate with another brand.
‘‘Is it a brand they quite like to be associated with? Lots of things that are very different from just a placard somewhere.
‘‘At Cornbury House Horse Trials, we said, ‘Let’s have the most amazing, beautiful tents with wonderful fire-cooking, food from our farm, and all the fun of it so if you are not into eventing you are still having a great time’.
‘‘What’s the experience you are going to give your sponsors that they are going to say this is something special? I think racing needs to learn that lesson.’’
Howden’s satisfaction with his official partnership with Ascot and Royal Ascot can be measured by the fact that an agreement has been signed to extend the arrangement for another five years from 2026.
His company hosts conferences at the track and takes 4,500 employees to its two-day Christmas jumps fixture. Howden continues: ‘‘Ascot is a fantastic British business, I would say it is the pinnacle of racing and we believe we are a great British business, the pinnacle of insurance. We are also an international brand in 55 countries around the world and Ascot is a very international brand. Anyone you want to talk to around the world will have heard of Ascot.
‘‘Royal Ascot is without doubt one of the ultimate corporate hospitality invitations you can get. If you invite a husband and wife to Royal Ascot, they are probably going to want to come. So, for the business that is really good.
‘‘When Royal Ascot is on, we run adverts but we don’t run Howden-only adverts, we run Howden and Ascot adverts. We are talking about that connection. It is not just us sticking our name on Ascot. We are embedded in a proper partnership.
‘‘I have had some really good feedback with people saying it is nice to see a British company and, to be blunt, not just another bookie getting behind racing.’’
Howden, whose company recently launched the Stud Employee Accident Benefit Scheme in association with the TBA, would now like to see the racing world get behind TAP, created to improve the transition of horses bred for racing into both competitive and leisure riding once their career in the sport is over.
It is a passion project for both him and daughter Jemima, a TAP trustee and now a full-time event rider who delivered one of her father’s proudest sporting moments when winning the CCI2*-S class event at Cornbury last year.
Launched in December 2024, TAP offers nationwide education and practical support to help new thoroughbred owners, tackling common misconceptions about the breed as well as subsidising training opportunities.
A national network of 16 TAP coaches is now in place, with over 190 training days and 2,000 training opportunities across the UK annually.
Howden says: ‘‘If you are the son or daughter of an eventer or the son or daughter of a trainer, you don’t need help. It is all obvious to you. But there’s a huge amount of people out there who love the equine world and who don’t have that privilege.
‘‘We work very closely with organisations like Retraining of Racehorses, but I wanted to do something that was very specific around practical training.’’
Standing alongside TAP, Cornbury House Horse Trials will also host the inaugural Thoroughbred Eventing Challenge when £50,000 will be up for grabs, a prize put up by Howden’s friend Jayne McGivern, owner of Dash Grange Stud.
Howden says some of Britain’s best-known event riders have their eye on the prize for the novice level class and hopes breeders, owners, trainers and racing fans will attend, especially to watch the concluding showjumping section of the event on September 12.
‘‘Anybody can win it. You just must be a thoroughbred registered with British Eventing and qualified to compete at a novice level,’’ Howden says.
‘‘I am sure lots of top riders are pretty sure they are going to win. Oliver Townend has told me a few times, ‘I am going to have that prize David’, and I am sure Laura [Collett] is keen too.
‘‘I am really trying to get TAP out into the racing world, saying, ‘Come on, get involved, what else can you do practically to help with this issue?’ I think it is being well-received.
‘‘I can see how you can expand and take it into other areas, do more around prize-money for ex-racehorses.’’
There is a similarity between how Howden operates his business and how he sees TAP. Both centre around empowerment and an opportunity to build and create, those two little words again.
He adds: “Like all these things, it takes a community of people to make a difference. It is no good one person or five. We must do things collectively and that collaboration is important.”
