Zara Phillips was ‘in pain and upset’ after breaking her collarbone in a riding accident which claimed the life of one of her favourite horses.
The Queen’s grand-daughter was riding Tsunami II in a cross-country event at Pau near the French Pyrenees when the mare fell at the relatively easy 15th fence and broke its neck.
Zara, 27, who is 11th in line to the throne, was taken to a local hospital, given strong painkillers by medical staff and had her arm put in a sling to support her broken bone.
She returned to the competition ground at the HSBC-sponsored three-day event, called Les Etoiles de Pau, to discover that the horse she has ridden for four years had been put down.
Zara, the European and world eventing champion, made her way back to Britain to be reunited with her boyfriend, England rugby player Mike Tindall.
A close friend said: ‘The horse hit the fence and broke its neck. Zara fell off and broke her collarbone. She was taken for professional medical treatment at a nearby hospital and is pretty drugged up with painkillers.
‘She is in quite a lot of pain and is very upset about the death of Tsunami, who was one of her favourites.’
Zara came off the same horse in June last year when it nosedived over a 7ft fence at the Bramham International Horse Trials near Wetherby, North Yorkshire. Though she struck the ground with a sickening thud to her neck, Zara was only dazed and Tsunami cantered away.
At the same event in the Pyrenees a year ago, Zara, daughter of Princess Anne and Mark Phillips, came off another horse, Red Baron, and ended up in a water-filled ditch.A spokesman for Les Etoiles de Pau last night confirmed that Zara’s horse, Tsunami II, had been put down and that Zara had been ‘badly injured’.
After the fall, the horse was immediately transported to the course veterinary centre, where it was found that one of its neck vertebrae was fractured. Vets immediately took the decision to put her down.
‘The horse fell after jumping over a small hurdle of laurel. It was the easiest obstacle on the course,’ spokesman Pascal Sayous added. ‘Zara broke her collarbone. Her shoulder is in a very bad way. We’re waiting for a full medical report.
‘The horse broke a vertebrae in the neck. This is terrible for a horse, it cannot recover from this. The vets decided to put the horse down.
‘It was a very ordinary accident, but it’s not common to see such a terrible outcome. In the 20 years that I’ve been doing this job, we’ve only had to put down two horses, including this one.
‘Zara has never been lucky in Pau; she always seems to fall when she comes here. It’s a great pity, because she’s a great rider.
‘Zara’s parents are normally with her, either her father or mother, but I haven’t seen them this year.’
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