Being saddled with injuries is a royal pain

FUNNILY enough, my interest in equestrianism dates back to the day I bumped into Princess Anne's husband, Captain Mark Phillips, in the gents' toilets at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. "Why the long face?" I asked unoriginally.

"Foggy" Phillips - as he was nicknamed by army chums on account of his wetness and thickness - paused, processed the question and mumbled something about "lots of aches and pains" before trying to exit through a broom cupboard.
Little was ever said about the horses, so one presumed Foggy, a British gold medallist at the Munich Games, was talking about injuries to the American riders he coached at Atlanta. But they were piffling compared with those of the two women in Australia's winning three-day event team.
Wendy Schaeffer competed on a still-broken leg, so painful she "walked" the course beforehand in a golf buggy. Gillian Rolton finished her round after twice falling off, chipping an elbow, breaking a collarbone and cracking two ribs.
Fond memories of the heroic "crocks of gold" came galloping back this week with the arrival of Trailblazers ($29.95, Rosenberg), the story of Australia's first Olympic equestrians, told by the only survivor, Wyatt "Bunty" Thompson and the writer Petronella McGovern.
It was 1956, the year of the Melbourne Olympics, but Australia's stringent quarantine regime meant the equestrian events were held in Stockholm. Never mind medal chances. As Bunty, a grazier from Trunkey Creek, near Bathurst, explains, it was a major achievement for Australian riders and horses even to compete. Some horses, including "The Queen of Downunder", were shipped out in January during a heatwave into a British snowstorm. Others were bought on arrival. Several succumbed to equine flu. All were sold after competing.
The team followed by boat for a six-month campaign of acclimatisation and competition. They paid themselves a £2-a-week living allowance. They rode largely untried horses, brought the wrong saddles and had to buy special "English" clothes - red coats, white breeches, black boots.
More used to bush roughriding, Bunty and his five teammates had no experience of "European style". Indeed, their Viennese trainer was appalled to discover Australians believed dressage - which relates to the training and deportment of horses - meant being best dressed on parade.
Remarkably, the team finished just outside the medal places, in fourth place. As Bunty recalls, they rode a fast-learning curve. In Sweden, they were shocked by easygoing attitudes towards casual sex. In England, they struggled with etiquette.
At a cocktail party in Harewood House, Yorkshire, Bunty was talking to Prince Phillip, when he stepped back to make way for a waiter, crushing the toes of a woman behind him - the Queen Mother. That's the thing about equestrianism: you're always bumping into royals.