U.K’s Princess Anne hospitalized with head injuries after horse incident
LONDON - Britain’s Princess Anne was hospitalized with a concussion and minor head injuries but was expected to make a full recovery, Buckingham Palace said Monday, after an incident that appeared to have involved a horse.
While the exact cause of the injuries was uncertain, a royal source said that Anne - King Charles III’s sister and Queen Elizabeth II’s only daughter - had been walking Sunday in an area of her Gatcombe Park estate where there were horses and that the injuries were consistent with an impact from a horse’s head or legs.
Anne remained under observation at a Bristol hospital “as a precautionary measure,” the palace said in a statement, and her planned engagements for the week would be postponed. That means she won’t attend a state banquet with the emperor and empress of Japan. She had also been scheduled to visit Canada.
“The King has been kept closely informed and joins the whole Royal Family in sending his fondest love and well-wishes to the princess for a speedy recovery,” the palace said.
Anne, 73, takes after her mother in being a keen horsewoman. She competed in the 1976 Olympic Games as a member of the British equestrian team. She was on horseback as recently as June 15, for the king’s birthday parade, and she was at the Royal Ascot horse races last week.
Anne is also one of the most popular and hardest-working members of her family. Among senior royals, she consistently attends the most events each year. And she has been an especially key player this year, as Charles and Catherine, Princess of Wales, pulled back from their public duties while undergoing cancer treatment.
Charles has resumed a lighter-than-usual summer schedule. Catherine made her first public appearance this year during the king’s birthday parade. She said in a statement that she hoped to join “a few public engagements over the summer” but added that “I am not out of the woods yet.”
The royal source said that Anne’s husband, Timothy Laurence, and her two children, Zara Tindall and Peter Phillips, were on the estate at the time of the incident Sunday. Her husband accompanied her to the hospital. It was not clear who called emergency services.
This might be the second high-profile incident involving royal horses this year. In April, five horses from the king’s mounted bodyguard were startled by construction work and galloped riderless through central London. None of the riders were seriously injured. Two of the horses are still receiving veterinary care.