Zara Tindall: Tough-love upbringing has shaped parenthood style

DAILYMAIL.COM • 2h ago

By JULIET CONWAY 00:02 08 Oct 2026, updated 08:26 08 Oct 2026

Zara Tindall has opened up about the tough-love upbringing she received from Princess Anne and Mark Phillips – including being told she would get no help when she decided to follow her parents into top-level equestrian sport.

The King’s niece, 45, said her parents warned her she would have to prove herself if she wanted to make a career in equestrian sport, while Olympic gold medallist Mark was such a hard taskmaster that she would struggle to ever win his approval.

And Zara admitted the experience has influenced her own approach to parenting – saying she is now trying ‘not to be quite that bad’ with the next generation.

Princess Anne, 76, and Mark Phillips, 78, were married for 19 years until 1992. They share son Peter, 48, and Zara, who went on to become a world champion and win an Olympic silver medal for Great Britain.

Zara and her rugby player husband Mike Tindall share three children – Mia, 12, Lena, eight, and Lucas, five – and their daughters are already following their mother’s interest in horses.

Speaking on the Talk Horse podcast this week, Zara said: ‘When I was about to leave school – and I had a great last couple of years at school and didn’t do very much work; I played lots of sport – I then thought, [I’ll] just see if I’m any good at it.

‘You know, riding a horse, try and find something that could maybe go all the way.’

She continued: ‘I think my dad and my mum were like, “But you have to do it properly. And this is how it’s going to work. And you’re not getting any help and you need to produce results”.

‘So that’s kind of how it started. I was like, “I’ll just have a crack, see if I’m any good at it”.’

Zara grew up surrounded by horses at Gatcombe Park, Princess Anne’s Gloucestershire estate, where both her parents’ riding careers meant she and her older brother Peter were immersed in the equestrian world from childhood.

But she said they were not spared the less glamorous side of looking after their animals.

Zara recalled: ‘We had to do everything with them. We had to clean our tack. We had to muck them out. My mum and dad’s head girl at the time was like a Rottweiler. And if we didn’t do it, we were in serious trouble.’

She added that the woman was ‘amazing’, saying she ‘completely taught us’ the discipline involved in keeping horses.

Zara and Peter were raised without royal titles, and Zara said growing up that way helped her feel like everyone else when she joined the Pony Club.

She said: ‘We were just part of the group, just having fun.’

For Zara, however, the toughest critic was closer to home. She said her father, who won team gold in eventing at the 1972 Munich Olympics, was far harder on her than her mother when it came to training.

‘Mum’s very relaxed,’ Zara said. ‘She’s like, “Just, you know, just do what you do”. Whereas my father’s like, “More of this, more of that”.’

She added: ‘My father was quite critical… Very rarely you would get a, “Yeah, that was good”, out of him.

‘So it was always striving to try and get that comment. He was a tough coach.’

Zara’s persistence ultimately paid off. She won individual gold at the 2006 World Equestrian Games in Aachen with her celebrated horse Toytown, having taken European individual gold the previous year.

She was named BBC Sports Personality of the Year in 2006 and later formed part of the British eventing team which won silver at the London 2012 Olympics, where Princess Anne presented her daughter with her medal.

Now a mother herself, Zara admitted she has tried not to be quite as hard on her own children as her father was on her.

Zara said she had recently taken her eldest child Mia and eight-year-old Lena jumping alongside her brother Peter’s daughters Savannah and Isla Phillips.

But she joked that Mia was less receptive to advice from her mother than her cousins were.

She said: ‘I said to Mia something, she just rolled her eyes. I literally said the same thing to the other guys; they didn’t roll their eyes at me.

‘And if someone else told her… I think I was probably like that with my mother and father too.’

Zara added that although she inherited some of Mark’s direct approach, she was trying to soften it for the next generation.

‘He was a tough coach,’ she said, ‘but I’m trying not to be quite that bad with my own kids.’

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