Riding high
Zara Phillips, the Queen’s 25-year-old granddaughter, is a hot favourite to walk away with the BBC’s Sports Personality of the Year title this month words:robert philip “AND THE WINNER of the BBC Sports Personality of the Year is…” The announcement has become one of the annual rites of December’s television. The gala celebration is held [...]
Zara Phillips, the Queen’s 25-year-old granddaughter, is a hot favourite to walk away with the BBC’s Sports Personality of the Year title this month
words:robert philip
“AND THE WINNER of the BBC Sports Personality of the Year is…” The announcement has become one of the annual rites of December’s television. The gala celebration is held during the festive season, when the nation honours the athlete who has captured our affections over the preceding 12 months.
The roll call of winners represents a veritable who’s who of British sport: Andrew Flintoff (cricket, 2005); Jonny Wilkinson (rugby union, 2003); David Beckham (football, 2001); Sir Steven Redgrave (rowing, 2000); Nigel Mansell (motor racing, 1992); Nick Faldo (golf, 1989); Lord Sebastian Coe (athletics, 1979); Sir Henry Cooper (boxing, 1970) Sir Bobby Moore (football, 1966) and Stirling Moss (motor racing, 1961).
“And the winner of the BBC Sports Personality of the Year 2006 is…?” Well, although the result will not be announced until the night of 10 December, it is an open secret that three leading contenders are:
Andy Murray, who beat Andy Roddick and Lleyton Hewitt on his way to winning the San Jose Open in the spring, following up that first ATP tournament success by defeating Roger Federer 7-5 6-4 in the Cincinnati Masters. Still aged only 19, Murray is now firmly established in the world’s Top 20.
Darren Clarke, who, still grieving from the death of his wife, Heather, to cancer a month earlier, made an emotional return to golf in the Ryder Cup at the K Club in Dublin in September, when he scored three points out of three to help conquer the Americans and earn a warm embrace from Tiger Woods.
And finally, Zara Phillips, the Queen’s 25-year-old granddaughter, who is 11th in line to the throne, and won the individual gold medal and the team silver at the World Three-Day Event Championships in Aachen, Germany. Should she top the BBC viewers’ poll, it will be the first time a mother and daughter have ever collected the award.
To the saddle born, Phillips is the daughter of Captain Mark Phillips, a member of the British team which won gold at the 1972 Olympics, and Princess Anne, who lifted the Personality of the Year award in 1971 after winning the individual European three-day event title (an event won by her daughter in 2005.) And if “personality” is the most important criteria, then Ms Phillips simply oozes the stuff.
One suspects that her parents and grandparents breathed a heart-felt sigh of relief when she exploded on to the sports headlines this summer.
Ever since her teenage years, when she was snapped by the paparazzi as a 17-year-old with a tongue-stud at a party celebrating her uncle Prince Charles’ 50th birthday at Highgrove, her life has tended to be played out on the front pages of Fleet Street’s tabloids.
But more drama was to come when Phillips (her name Zara comes from the Greek, meaning “bright as the dawn”, which was suggested to his sister by the Prince of Wales) embarked upon a stormy three-year relationship with jump-jockey Richard Johnson. Unfortunately, their highly public rows were more soap opera than Royal Family. Now happily on the arm of England rugby union star Mike Tindall, Phillips has become a sporting star and has strong links with several charities. She famously auctioned off the gown she wore to the London premiere of the movie Seabiscuit for the Tsunami Appeal, and also works with Cancer Care for Children, the Cauldwell Trust for children with disabilities and serious illnesses, and the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children.
But it is as an equestrian that she is now best known, following the House of Windsor’s long fascination with the world of sport. “I didn’t do peculiar things because I’m a member of the Royal Family,” Phillips has explained. “It’s sometimes hard to get people to realise that we’re not any different. It’s just the profile we get. You’re known to the public and associated with the Royals, who have always behaved in a certain way. People are surprised to see us doing normal things because in past generations they didn’t.
“Being in the spotlight can be a burden. It is worse for William and Harry but they are handling it well. I was quite lucky. I don’t have an HRH title. We had a normal upbringing. I can’t really understand this ‘oh my God, she’s gone to the pub and they’re drinking out of the bottle’ thing. Because I don’t understand why I wouldn’t or what’s wrong with it.”
If you detect a rebellious streak, a desire to be regarded as “normal”, then Princess Anne was no less sparky in her youth when she bemoaned the lack of privacy afforded her by an intrusive media: “When I appear in public, people expect me to neigh, grind my teeth, paw the ground and swish my tail – none of which is easy. Whenever I’m approaching a water-jump, with hundreds of photographers waiting for me to fall in and thousands of spectators wondering what’s going to happen next, the horse is just about the only one who doesn’t know I’m a Royal.”
Horses and Royals go together, as the old song says, like a horse and carriage. After all, it is hard to imagine Princes Harry or William leaving Buckingham Palace with a pair of football boots tied round their necks. “Generally, what dictates whether you are going to choose one sport or another is its availability to you personally,” revealed the Princess
Royal. “If you live next door to a football pitch or a running track, that may well influence the way you approach your own sport. I grew up with ponies.
“I didn’t like netball at school – I used to get wolf-whistles because of my short skirt – and golf has always seemed an arduous way to go for a walk. I’ve always preferred to take my dogs out. But I would have been quite happy to have had a shot at playing polo if I’d been given the chance.”
Her daughter, too, has attracted many a wolf-whistle for a wardrobe that includes many a skimpy little number, but it is for her sensitivity and athletic prowess that
Phillips is increasingly becoming one of our most popular Royals. After her victory on Toytown in Aachen, she immediately dedicated her triumph to close friend Sherelle Duke, who had been killed in a three-day event at Southampton the previous week.
“I went out to win the world championship for Sherelle,” explained a clearly emotional Phillips. “I was so glad I managed to give her the gold medal because, due to our training schedule, I didn’t manage to go over to Northern Ireland to say goodbye…”
The 2005 winner of The Sunday Times Sportswoman of the Year title ahead of yachtswoman Dame Ellen MacArthur and long-distance runner Paula Radcliffe, Zara Phillips has grown up in the most delightful way.
OF HORSES AND BLUE BLOODS
OTHER MEMBERS OF THE ROYAL FAMILY WHO ARE PASSIONATE ABOUT SPORTS
“If it were not for the Archbishop of Canterbury,” said Her Majesty the Queen of her love of horse-racing, “I should be off on my plane to Longchamp every Sunday.”
The “Sport of Kings” has long been the “Sport of Queens” in England. Queen Elizabeth II (as the late Queen Mother before her) has become a regular sight in the winners’ enclosure at Goodwood, Epsom and the like. As a famous leader in The Daily Telegraph once put it: “If HM would rather go to Ascot than peer at a lot of dirty nappies in the Institute of Contemporary Arts, what is wrong with that?”
Even 50 years ago, the Queen Mother was one of the central characters in the most famous Grand National of them all, when her horse, Devon Loch, 50 yards from the finish line and with victory seemingly assured, suddenly pricked up his ears as if distracted by the cheers of the nation, prepared to jump a phantom obstacle, then belly-flopped to the turf, his four legs splayed out beneath him.
To ESB and his rider, Dave Dick, went victory, while losing jockey Dick Francis bought a typewriter, wrote his first thriller (becoming the Queen Mother’s favourite
author in the process), and earned countless millions.
The Royal Family’s sporting traditions are varied in the extreme. Did you know, for instance, that the future King George VI once took a hat-trick which merited mention in the pages of the cricket “bible” Wisden? The feat was achieved in the private grounds of Windsor Castle when he was still a lad in short trousers, and as the three “batsmen” concerned were his grandfather (Edward VII), father (who would become George V) and elder brother David (later and briefly Edward
VIII), we can safely assume there was a certain amount of good-natured jiggerypokery involved.
What is without doubt is that the king-to-be was an accomplished tennis player; as the Duke of York, he competed in the men’s doubles event at the 1926 Wimbledon Championships, partnered by his equerry, Wing-Commander Louis Greig.
