UK NEWS
MARRIAGE? HOLD YOUR HORSES, SAYS ZARA
Zara Phillips says she is not engaged
By Camilla Tominey
ZARA PHILLIPS has emphatically denied rumours that she has secretly become engaged to her rugby star boyfriend Mike Tindall.
The Queen’s grand-daughter used a major TV interview to discount newspaper reports that the couple are making wedding plans.
In a wide-ranging chat, the world three-day eventing champion spoke of her disappointment at having to miss the Beijing Olympics and revealed she already has a new horse lined up to replace ageing mount Toytown at the 2012 London Games.
But it is the subject of marriage to Mike that sees the feisty 27-year-old at her most animated in the ITV interview, to be screened tomorrow on This Morning.
Before presenters Phillip Schofield and Fern Britton could even finish asking a question about their relationship, Zara interrupted, insisting: “I’m not getting married.”
“Apparently I am, but no, I’m not,” she said. Although she admitted that the couple, who share a cottage on her mother Princess Anne’s Gatcombe estate, were under a lot of pressure from rugby friends to tie the knot, they are not planning marriage just yet.
She explained: “Every time I go to a game everyone always asks: ‘When are you going to get married?’ But we are just happy both of us. We’re happy the way we are. He’s captain of Gloucester this year and we’re just trying to concentrate on our sports.”
Zara has been forced to miss the last two Olympic Games because of injuries to her champion gelding, Toytown. But she revealed a new horse called Tallyho Sambucca is currently her best prospect for the London Olympics, when Toytown will be 20, and too old to compete.
“He has just got bad timing I think,” Zara said. “It was massively disappointing. I’m quite glad it’s [Beijing] over now so I can move on. It’s massively disappointing for him as well as it was his last chance. He won’t get to London unfortunately because he’ll be too old.
“I’m trying to find the next Toytown and I’ve hopefully found my horse for 2012,” she said. “He’s called Tallyho Sambucca.
“I bought him off an Australian this year. It’s a new partnership so we’ll have to see what happens.” Zara
was competing on the 10-year-old horse at this weekend’s international horse trials at Blenheim Palace, having escaped serious injury when she fell from Ardfield Magic Star at last week’s three-day event at Burghley.
Laughing off the horror fall, she said: “I landed on my head so I didn’t notice it. Luckily it was quite soft ground and the horse was fine as well which is the main thing.”
Zara, who became the first Royal to win sponsorship when she clinched a deal with spread betting firm Cantor Index, a subsidiary of BGC, in 2003, denied that either Princess Anne or the Queen had helped fund her career in her notoriously expensive sport.
She said: “I had to do it myself. My parents were very clear to me, they said unless you produce results then you won’t get any help.”
Zara said she and her older brother Peter, 30, were both glad that their mother insisted they were not given titles when they were born.
She added: “We had a great childhood and it was very privileged at the same time, being in the Royal Family, but we had a great time not having a title. My cousins obviously do have a title and sometimes don’t have as much freedom as they should.”
She also revealed that she is already missing her brother, who moved to Hong Kong last month with his new wife Autumn, 30, following their wedding in Windsor in May.
“It was very sad actually, because I’m very close to him and we talk all through the week and if I’ve got a problem
he’s the first person I ring up but it’s a great opportunity for him. I’m going to go and visit.”
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