Queen Elizabeth Net Worth: Staggering Amount Earned From Decades Of Horse Racing 

Queen Elizabeth II is known for her love of horses. And this hobby apparently pays a lot, since the monarch has earned a staggering amount in her three decades as a racehorse owner.

According to Daily Mail's Joe Middleton, new research revealed Queen Elizabeth II has raked in a whopping £7,768,448 ($9,794,459) from her horses, which have won 534 races over the last 31 years. The monarch's racehorses have participated in 3,205 runs during that period, including flat and jump races in the United Kingdom and Ireland.

In 2016, the Queen recorded her highest winnings ever since 1988, when records began, after raking in £560,274 ($706,522) from her horses' participation in flat and jump seasons. Her top-earning horse, Carlton House, alone garnered £772,815 ($974,624) in prize money over this period.

This year, Queen Elizabeth has already earned £192,765 ($243,105) in winnings. This amount, however, pales in comparison to the prize money earned by Sheikh Hamdan Al Maktoum, £465,195 ($586,680), which makes him the top earner so far for 2019.

But while she may be earning hundreds of thousands of dollars a year from her horses, a royal finance expert recently revealed that Queen Elizabeth's hobby is also quite costly to run and maintain.

David McClure told Yahoo's "The Royal Box" that taking care of several thoroughbred horses and maintaining stables drains Her Majesty's finances as much as $700,000 annually.

“She’s a great lover of the turf," McClure said of the Queen. "Now this is quite an expensive hobby, at one stage she had about a string of about 20 thoroughbred horses, she had three studs, she had stables."

According to McClure, the Queen's horses, at most, breaks even despite raking in winnings from races.

“I’m sure the stud probably breaks even but the normal sort of horse racing venture doesn’t so it probably is a drain on the private purse," he explained.

Queen Elizabeth's love for horses started much earlier, however, as the monarch first showed interest in them as a young girl. She got her first horse, a Shetland mare named Peggy, as a birthday gift for her fourth birthday from King George V.

Prince Philip's wife has also proven her passion for horses with the causes she has taken up over the decades. Among her patronages are a number of charities focused on horses, including the Fell Pony Society, the British Horse Society and the Highland Pony Society.