Equestrianism: Phillips attracts sponsorship for Olympic challenge

Zara Phillips was in the news again yesterday. But this time it was not anything to do with her tempestuous on-off-on-off (watch this space) romance with the leading National Hunt jockey Richard Johnson, or her pierced tongue (the stud she adopted on a whim at an Elgin tattoo parlour when she was 19 is long gone) or her occasional propensity for getting squiffy at Hunt Balls (and how kind "friends" are to fill the tabloids in on the details).

This time she was in the public eye as a sportswoman seeking to reach the rarefied levels of equestrianism once occupied by her mother, the Princess Royal, and her father Captain Mark Phillips, Olympians both.

To that end, the spread betting company of Cantor Index, a recent offshoot from the Cantor Fitzgerald financial group, has announced a one-year sponsorship deal intended to help the 21-year-old royal in her ambition to make the senior British three-day eventing team by underwriting her costs in keeping the three horses on which her ambitions rest – Toy Town, and the two novices, Dingbat and Marengo.

Phillips' aspirations were given credence by her performances last year, when she won the prestigious Bramham event and took the individual silver medal for Britain in the Young Riders' European Championships in Austria.

The equine credentials of her parents have been good and bad for Miss Phillips. By the time he was her age, Dad had been to the 1968 Olympics as a reserve, four years before winning team gold in Munich, and Mum had won the Burghley horse trials and the senior European Championship.

"People always assume that because your parents are Princess Anne and Mark Phillips you should be as good as they were," Phillips said yesterday at a launch held at a Notting Hill restaurant, where she reluctantly accepting that the Athens Olympics of 2004 could be a target.

For someone who has featured so colourfully in the newspapers, she does not appear to be a natural attention-seeker. Indeed, even a short speech of thanks to a small and well-intentioned gathering caused her cheeks to flush.

It was a far cry from the moment when, at her uncle Charles's birthday gathering, she stuck her be-studded tongue out at the massed photographers who, metaphorically speaking, replied in kind.

Her father, who now works as chef d'equipe to the United States' world champion three-day eventing team was in proud attendance yesterday. But he is realistic about the size of the task his daugher is taking on. "Zara's mother and I brought up both our children to enjoy riding," he said. "But if you want to be a competitor it's a very different thing."

That said, he maintained that he had noticed a "new application" in his daughter in the second part of last year – a time which, incidentally, followed an acrimonious split with her boyfriend.

The rider formerly known as Wild Zara appears to be sitting up and taking notice.