#equestrianne

[thiziri]

Princess Anne on Persian Holiday nearly falls during the one-day event at the Amberley Horse Show in Cirencester, on 18 March 1973. 

[aimeedaisies]

7th March 2023

The Princess Royal, with her husband Sir Tim Laurence, visited Sandown Park on Tuesday, March 7, where she presented the trophy to the winners of a race named in memory of her grandmother, The Queen Mother.

The race, called the ‘Queen Elizabeth, The Queen Mother Memorial Amateur Jockeys’ Handicap Hurdle‘, is an annual contest held at the Surrey racecourse, with the 2023 edition being won by Mayhem Mia.

The six-year-old mare is trained by Chris Honour in Devon and was ridden to victory by Private Vincent Webster of the Irish Army.

The content is restricted to amateur jockeys who are either serving or retired members of the military.

After Mayhem Mia crossed the winning line in front, Princess Anne presented the trophy to the horse’s delighted connections.

The race, formerly known as the Annington Amateur Riders’ Handicap Hurdle, was renamed in honour of The Queen Mother back in 2015.

Her Late Majesty was one of jump racings biggest champions, and was a regular visitor to Sandown Park until her death in 2002 at the age of 101.

For over three decades, she was Patron of the Grand Military Race Committee, and was a huge supporter of the race that is today held in her honour.

The Queen Mother had well over 400 wins as an owner, including five Grand Military Gold Cups, a race that was also held on Tuesday at Sandown.

After the death of her mother, The Queen took over as Patron of the Grand Military Race Committee, a position she still holds today.

By Charlie Proctor | Royal Central

[fantasticbirdhologram]

FAnnedom, get in here, we're watching Anne answer sports questions

[grandmaster-anne]

16 March 1985 HRH Princess Anne competing in the snow at the Aldon Horse Trials

[nobby-gee]

Check out this listing I just added to my Poshmark closet: Little Girl and Horse Metal Sign.

[princessanneftw]

Princess Anne, mounted on Royal Ocean, receives some encouragement from Queen Elizabeth II, watched by Prince Philip, at the Windsor Park Horse Trials on 30 April 1969

[grandmaster-anne]

@annefic here are the pictures 😊

I saw a couple of photos that show Anne seemed competing at an event in Aug 2004 and her number was 443. I was shocked cuz Anne was 54 at that time. Wondering if you know the name of that event and if Was it the last time she competed?

I know the pictures you speak of and can see them in my mind but cannot for the life of me find them on Google. Yes it was the last time she competed, don't remember what competition it was (my mind is suggesting Bramham or Blenheim but I have no idea if that's right or not, I feel like it said it on the pinny though), and if I remember correctly she stepped in last second to fill in for Zara when Zara suddenly couldn't compete for some reason

Longevity in equestrian careers tends to be very high, though - Anne honestly left the international scene very early compared to her contemporaries, and it's not uncommon for folks well past age 50 to still be competing even in horse trials (which are more demanding on the rider than e.g. dressage where there have been many riders who remained internationally competitive on into their 70s). What's more surprising about Anne is her going straight back to competing after such a long time off, it tells you how much casual riding and foxhunting she is doing to still be in good enough shape to walk right into that!

[deadandphilgames]

i really hope no horse girl sees kurtis’ new video and thinks that EquestriAnne is a good name for their child

[style-my-ride]

We sprang forward this past weekend, which means the warmer weather is almost upon us! Inspired by spring, this look captures everything you could ever want in pastels and apple green breeches. The breeches are from Annie’s Equestrianne Apparel and are paired with this lovely Valentino trench coat covered in a spring floral pattern. The boots from this look are from Style My Ride’s own Vincero line, and are the perfect pair to complete this look. To see more from this shoot and more, visit the link below!

http://www.stylemyride.net/red-valentino-and-annies-apple-green

[theartofrecovery]

Equestrienne - Marc Chagall - 1931

[portiaadams]

Equestrian sports are also divided by biological sex-the rider’s, not the horses’- and it makes absolutely no sense. My ability to clear a hurdle or guide my horse through an obstacle course is in no way determined by my genitalia.

call me ignorant but i genuinely don’t understand why sports have to be split up by gender.

[thiziri]

Princess Anne rides her horse during the Royal Windsor Horse Trials, on 01 April 1972.

[grandmaster-anne]

Princess Anne

Horse & Hound | Published 13 August 2020

“IT was a fairy story ending,” read the 1971 Horse & Hound report of the Princess Royal’s victory at the European Championships at Burghley. “Of course, everyone knows now that Princess Anne won the individual championship, but only those who were there can appreciate the extent of the popularity of her victory, or the tension that gripped the thronged arena during her jumping round on Sunday.”

The reporter WW Thomson’s gushing account of the 21-year-old’s performance aboard Doublet perhaps reflected a nation gripped by this sporting tale; a rapid rise to the top, a home-bred destined to be a polo pony and a mother who happened to be The Queen.

“This really was a fabulous event. The Queen and Prince Philip were there, the weather was right, the winners were right, and Princess Anne not only beat the best in Europe, but trounced them,” it read.

In the following decade, the Princess was on the podium at another European Championships with a different horse, at an Olympic Games and in the top 10 of the world’s biggest four-stars, silencing any sceptics who’d wondered if Burghley had been a chance feat.

“It was very new really, having a woman royal doing such a tough sport,” reflects her fellow competitor and former team-mate Lucinda Green. “Not long before, eventing was considered a man’s sport. She was more than up to the task of eventing, but she just had to deal with the press, which is never easy. In retrospect she did our sport a huge service.”

FOR someone barely out of teenage-hood when she reached the sport’s highest echelons, the Princess’ start in the saddle was refreshingly low-key, with ponies turned out rugless and ridden straight from muddy fields.

The setting was, of course, grander than most – Windsor, Sandringham and Balmoral served as sprawling riding schools, and early equestrian thrills came from riding in her grandmother’s carriage to watch Trooping the Colour on Horse Guards Parade. But there was also an unremarkable Shetland (Fum), a hefty Welsh pony who stood on her toe (Kirby Cane Greensleeves) and humiliating bending races on the 13.2hh Bandit.

By the time she was riding the 14.2hh Watersmeet High Jinks, who was stabled at the Moat House riding school in Kent during her last year of boarding school, there was no escaping her gilded status.

On one occasion, workmen spotted the Princess’s policeman leaning against the end of the school, before calling out “‘Oi! You!... Are you royalty or something? Why’s that man watching you?” she recalls in her 1991 autobiography Riding Through My Life.

“At the age of 16 or 17 you’re not terribly ready with an instant repartee to queries like that, so I replied, ‘Well, yes, I am.’”

Competition discipline and manners were instilled by the riding school’s owner Cherry Hatton-Hall, one of many who helped shape the Princess’s eventual prowess. Before the Princess and her older brother were competent enough to ride with The Queen, Her Majesty would impart knowledge from her bicycle as she rode alongside them. And then there was the groom Frank Hatcher at Windsor, who was a stickler for ensuring feet were picked out and tack was on correctly.

But it was perhaps Alison Oliver (see box, above) who was the vital piece in the puzzle that enabled Princess Anne to transition from a horse-mad schoolgirl to a sportswoman riding for Britain in just three years.

“I was very fortunate to be in the right place at the right time,” says Alison about her royal student. “We just clicked.”

WHEN the Princess realised that a conventional career didn’t seem viable on leaving school, she was determined to channel her energy into doing something well – and the answer was equestrian sport.

As Mary Gordon-Watson, who was part of the British team at the 1971 Europeans, says: “She was obviously very determined and hard-working, like she is in everything that she does. She wanted to succeed, and she did, at the highest level.”

At first, the Princess was lured by the prospect of polo; riding her father’s ponies had given her a taste of the competitive spirit of horses. But it was the combination of being lent the crown equerry Lt Col Sir John Miller’s horse Purple Star, who sparked her interest in horse trials, and being sent to Alison Oliver’s stables at Warfield in Berkshire, that meant that an eventing career was set.

By the time she won gold at Burghley in 1971, she’d ridden at just two other-three-day events, but it was soon obvious that this was no flash in the pan.

“You couldn’t fail to be impressed when she achieved success all over again [at subsequent championships] with Goodwill, who was a totally different type of horse,” adds Mary.

“From Doublet, Princess Anne went to a veritable hurricane in Goodwill,” says Lucinda about the difference in the Princess’ two championship rides; the first who was bred as a polo pony was polite and willing, and the latter was a famously strong former showjumper.

“If Doublet had turned up later in my career, we would all have looked at him and said: ‘What’s that?’,” the Princess told Eventing magazine about the gelding who The Queen had bred out of an Argentine mare and on whom Prince Philip had played polo.

“It was only because he came along at such an early stage in my life and because he was home-bred that he got his chance to be an eventer at all.”

In contrast, she remembers Goodwill as “nearly everybody’s idea of the ideal type of event horse… with excellent conformation, strong, active paces and well-developed jumping muscles”.

The pay-off for this raw talent, however, was having to learn to adapt to the gelding’s strength.

“Dressage was largely a case of containment,” she admitted.

AT the 1973 Europeans in Kiev, the Princess’ and Goodwill’s appearance came to an abrupt end when she fell at the second fence.

But out of the saddle there was also her own high profile to contend with; a bugging device was found in her hotel room telephone, and on one occasion she was accosted with outstretched arms by an over-friendly hotel maid.

“She might have mistaken me for somebody else, somebody more famous like Lucinda Prior-Palmer for instance, but then we shall never know,” quipped the princess.

At the Europeans in Luhmühlen two years later, she was subjected to press speculation that Goodwill’s good dressage score was the result of doping, when what they had in fact seen was Capt Mark Phillips giving the horse a sugar lump before the test.

This angst – combined with waking up on cross-country morning with a cold – didn’t detract from her performance. She clinched the individual and team silver medals, a triumph she looks back on with greater satisfaction than her gold four years earlier.

“By that stage, everything that could have gone wrong had done, and I’d started again,” she told Horse & Hound.

However, it was at the Montreal Olympics the following year that the Princess was given a stark reminder of the levelling nature of the sport.

With her parents and three brothers watching on, concussion after a fall on cross-country day meant that she was even stripped of the satisfaction of remembering finishing the course. But her upbringing had armed her with an enviable sense of perspective and the luxury of being able to see her sport as a hobby.

“I had other things to do that would not be affected by my performance, good or bad,” she reminisced in her autobiography.

The following year, her son Peter was born, and although she went on to finish sixth at Badminton in 1979, no more championships beckoned. For over a decade, however, whether photographed with a medal around her neck, or dusting herself off after hitting the turf, the media – and public – were captivated. Eventing had been dealt an ace card.

Pictures by Keystone Press/Alamy, Leslie Lane, Alec Russell, Press Association, PA Archive/PA Images and Central Press Photos

[nobby-gee]

Check out this listing I just added to my Poshmark closet: Little Girl and Horse Metal Sign.

[princessanneftw]

Princess Anne and Goodwill at the Badminton Horse Trials

[thiziri]

Princess Anne riding Goodwill, during the Dressage section of the European Eventing Championship at Luhmuhlen, on 01 September 1975.