Zara Phillips is sitting in an office yards from her unassuming cottage on the
fringes of the Gatcombe estate in Gloucestershire. Outside is all the mud,
the sacks of hay and horse food, the rusty bits of machinery and bric-a-brac
of any working farm. Inside is a woman who would much prefer to talk about
driving trucks than what it means to be twelfth in line to the throne.
The proud owner of an HGV licence - “But only for rigids,” she points out,
“because you need a totally different licence for an artic” - Phillips likes
nothing better than sitting at the wheel of her 26-tonne horsebox and mobile
home, a vehicle so vast that you could almost fit her house into it.
She paints the rather incongruous scene of a recent cross-Channel ferry
journey that she spent chatting to her fellow truckers in the canteen. And
why not, she asks, a little put out that she might be regarded as above such
things. “Some people walk into my yard not expecting to see me there,” she
says. “I'm like, ‘Why not?' Why shouldn't I be working here? It's my job.”
Living on the edge of the family estate and taking up equestrianism for a
career may not appear to be striking out, but you do not have to spend long
in Phillips's company to be struck by her independence. She recoils, almost
physically, at the idea that her sporting career is about aping her parents,
the Princess Royal and Mark Phillips, Olympians both. “It's personal to me,
nothing to do with them,” she says.
Phillips is as candid as any member of the Royal Family - albeit one who has
no royal title and performs no royal duties - can possibly be. “No, I
haven't hosted an Ann Summers party like the papers claimed,” she says - but
she would probably tell you if she had.
She is at her most open talking about her sport, in which she won the European
Championship in 2005 and the World Championship in 2006, becoming only the
third rider to hold both titles at the same time. They were achievements
that led to her becoming the BBC Sports Personality of the Year - 35 years
after her mother won the same award - ahead of Darren Clarke, the golfer,
and Beth Tweddle, the gymnast.
If that was a golden year, 2008 was, to borrow her grandmother's phrase, an
annus horribilis. Injury to Toytown, her horse, ruled Phillips out of the
Olympics for the second time, appalling luck exacerbated by the four-year
wait for another opportunity. She was so despairing that she could not bring
herself to watch events in Beijing, where the Great Britain team won bronze.
“When you have a horse like that and you can't go, it's not that you know you
can win, but there is the possibility,” she says. “You have a horse that
might be able to do it. And the Olympics is the top of everyone's wish list.
It's different to anything else.
“My Mum was over there, my Dad trains the Americans, so he was over there, my
brother was just moving over there to live and Mike [Tindall, her boyfriend,
the England rugby union player] was on tour in Canada, so I was on my own
back here. “It was horrible and I didn't watch any of it. It wasn't that I
wasn't interested in how the team were doing, but it just reminded me of
everything that had gone wrong.”
More misfortune followed in October when, competing in Pau, France, in a
cross-country event, she approached a jump on Tsunami II. “It was quite an
easy fence, but she'd hit something similar at the beginning of the summer,”
she says. “She hit the rail and then we were both flying over head-first.
And when there are mistakes at that level, you don't tend to get away
lightly.”
Phillips landed on her shoulder, breaking her collarbone. Tsunami II fared
worse. Although the horse staggered back to her feet, she had broken her
neck and was put down soon afterwards. “I lost two horses last year, one in
competition and one here in the field,” she says. “I hope I never have to do
it again. It's like having to say goodbye to a friend.
“I was quite glad that I was injured because I would hate to have got up and
walked away with nothing in those circumstances. So two of the worst things
that can happen in this sport happened last year. I'm hoping that's it for a
long time.”
Although Toytown - a horse she describes as “a show-off, he thinks he's the
man” - will hopefully compete for another year or two, she is training up
other horses in the hope that, come London 2012, she is not reliant on one.
The opportunity to compete in the Olympics on home soil is even more exciting
because of past disappointments, although Phillips, a woman who knows her
mind, is troubled that the facilities for equestrianism fail to tick the
legacy box that was said to be such a significant plank of the 2012 bid.
A temporary 23,000-seat venue is to be built in Greenwich Park and then
dismantled, and Phillips asks reasonably whether a permanent site such as
Burghley or Windsor would not have made more sense - and not just because
the family owns a castle around the corner.
“What is annoying is that they put something there and then take it all down
afterwards,” she says. “What's the point of that? Why don't you do it to a
space that can be used with a legacy, not Greenwich Park, where people walk
their dogs? I thought that was the whole point of bidding for the Games.
“Windsor has had horse trials. The rowing is out there, so it's not like it's
miles away. It used to host an event but they ran out of money and the
ground wasn't great, so why not try to make it better?”
Concerns about the venue aside, Phillips expects the public to watch in large
numbers. We are a horsey nation, even if attempts to popularise
equestrianism, with the Express Eventing at the Millennium Stadium in
Cardiff last year - a sort of Twenty20 on four legs - falling rather flat.
“They were aiming to try to get people who don't watch horses and that's not
what happened,” she says. “It was the usual crowd. Perhaps it was a bit
ambitious, but we want the sport to appeal to as wide an audience as
possible.”
Attracting attention, and backing, is not a problem for Phillips. She competes
largely on the back of sponsorship money, including a new partnership with
Musto, the clothing company for whom she posed recently on a Devon beach.
“That's not modelling, it's having my picture taken, although I was once on
a billboard in Times Square in New York,” she says. “That was quite cool.”
She also benefits from the support of wealthy patrons, who own the horses that
can trade for as much as £100,000. “Yes, you need owners with money to be
able to run the sport, but that's exactly the same as football,” she says.
“They are paying footballers a load of money. How's that not elitist if it's
all about money?
“Some people still think that I go up, get on my horse and that's it. And
that's what I have been doing from the age of 5. But trying to get a horse
to win a World Championship, an Olympics, takes years of day-in, day-out
work, having to run a business.
“I'm very hands-on. In the winter, I'll muck out when the girls have their
holidays. It's my yard and it's run the way I want it to be run. But I don't
want to preach about that.
“It's a great sport even if there are dangers. I love the risk of it. At the
top level you have to get your adrenalin up or you wouldn't be going out
there at all.”
And, with that, she was off to get her truck ready for the first competition
of the year tomorrow at a low-key event in Surrey. This morning she will be
behind the wheel. Keep an eye out - you might just see her in a lay-by caff.
How the royal ‘wild child’ has grown into a highly respected and successful
sportswoman
- The Queen’s eldest granddaughter, 27, was dubbed a “wild child” in her
teenage years. After a tempestuous relationship with Richard Johnson, the
jockey, she is now with Mike Tindall, the Gloucester and England rugby union
player. Phillips has a qualification in equine physiotherapy from Exeter
University.
- Her mother, Princess Anne, represented Britain at the 1976 Olympics, was the
European eventing champion in 1971 and won a silver medal in the individual
and team disciplines in the 1975 European Championships.
- Captain Mark Phillips, Zara’s father, won team golds in the 1971 European
Championships and 1972 Olympics and a team silver 16 years later in Seoul.
He coaches the United States team now and designs courses.
- Phillips won team and individual three-day eventing golds at the 2005
European Championships, collected the world title in 2006 and was named BBC
Sports Personality of the Year, an award won by her mother 35 years
previously.
- She won a team gold at the 2007 European Championships, but withdrew from
the Britain Olympic team in 2004 and 2008 because of injuries to her horse,
Toytown.
Words by Tom Dart
