'I'm lucky to be in team'

Zara Phillips, Queen Elizabeth’s grand-daughter and one of five riders selected for Britain’s equestrian eventing team, is looking forward to the ‘buzz’ of staying with other athletes in London’s Olympic village. 

“I just count myself very lucky to be riding on a team with these guys,” Zara told reporters in a press meet on Tuesday that created its own buzz. 

The eventing team will stay in the athletes’ village during the Games and when asked how she felt about it Phillips said: “Obviously it will be great to be part of the Olympics and to get the atmosphere and the buzz of being part of it.” 

Phillips, the youngest eventing team member at 31, will be riding at her first Olympics. She said she hoped she was ‘luckier’ than mother Princess Anne, a member of the British Olympic team at the 1976 Games, and father Mark Phillips, who won team gold in Munich in 1972 and silver in Seoul in 1988. 

“My mum fell off and I don’t think my dad ran the cross-country,” Phillips joked, adding that her father had not said much about his own experiences. “He’s not a big talker. He’s more interested in training.”