Princess Anne's Reject Horses

7 months ago 23rd Mar 14:00

Britain's Princess Anne is having difficulty selling her horses - because people think they're the rejects of her daughter Zara Phillips.

The Princess Royal - who competed in eventing for Great Britain in the 1976 Olympics - breeds a lot of horses but tries not to let equestrienne Zara ride them as it means they are no longer desirable.

She said: "All my horses are for sale, but the difficulty is that if Zara rides them, I can't sell them, because people think they must be her rejects! All breeders are faced with this problem. It's the same for the queen. If you're a stud owner, you've got to sell the good ones as well as the others in order to keep going."

There's a genuine argument for it, from a horse-welfare and safety point of view.

Zara is the reigning Eventing World Champion who won the World Championship in Aachen.

In 2008 her horse, Tsunami II, had to be put down after it suffered a broken neck after tripping over the hedge at a cross-country event in France.

As a keen horsewoman, Anne is also monitoring the current controversy about London's Greenwich being too small to host the equestrian events in the 2012 Olympics.

She added to Britain's County Life magazine: "There's a genuine argument for it, from a horse-welfare and safety point of view."