She’s the ultimate royal horse girl and an equestrian icon for many millions around the world. So it made sense for Princess Anne, the Princess Royal, to attend the official opening ceremony of the 150th Dublin Horse Show at the Royal Dublin Society this week. And she did so wearing a vintage horse pin she’s had for over 40 years.
The former Olympic equestrian, who competed at the 1976 Games in Canada, has previous worn the pony-shaped gold and diamond pin on several occasions, dating back to the 1980s.
The playful accessory has fittingly accompanied Princess Anne to many sporting events in the past, including the racing festival at Cheltenham Racecourse and Royal Ascot, and the opening of Reaseheath Equestrian College last year. It’s the perfect piece for the famously horse-loving royal, whose mother, the late Queen Elizabeth II was also a passionate equestrian, and whose own daughter, Zara Tindall, is similarly an accomplished rider.
In 2012, Tindall followed in her mother’s immaculate footsteps (or should that be hoofprints?) by competing at the 2012 Olympic Games in London. The young royal actually helped to carry the Olympic flame at Cheltenham Racecourse on her horse, Toytown, as has part of the Great Britain Eventing Team, won a silver medal at the Games, which was actually presented to her by her mother.
Princess Anne’s own equestrian career began early – she took part in her first public competition aged just 11, and continued to ride competitively whilst at school at Benenden School in Kent. One of her greatest riding triumphs came in 1971 at the European Eventing Championships at Burghley House, where the princess became the first British royal to claim a European gold medal. She was still only 21. In 1985, the princess jockeyed in a charity horse racing event at the Epsom Derby, finishing a respectable fourth.
Though the Princess retired from competitive riding decades ago, she continues to support equestrian charities and is renowned as one of the hardest working members of the Royal Family. She is a British representative at the International Olympic Committee and has been a patron of the Riding for the Disabled charity since 1971 (she has acted as president since 1985).
Last year, the princess suffered an accident whilst in a field with horses in South Africa, which required a lengthy period of recovery. “I don’t have any idea what I was doing in the field, because I never normally went that way…It just reminds you, shows you – you never quite know, something [can happen] and you might not recover,” she later explained. In a stirring display of her famous resilience, the Princess recovered well enough to be able to ride in the annual Trooping the Colour parade in London this year, almost twelve months after her injury.
A symbol of strength, freedom, resilience and loyalty, horses have been an important part of Princess Anne’s life from the very beginning. Something she reminds us all every time she wears her gold and diamond pin.
Like this? Take a closer look at the romantic ring Jenna Ortega wore on her ‘Wednesday’ press tour.
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