Zara Phillips Becomes First Royal Family Member To Win An Olympic Medal

Zara Phillips, Queen Elizabeth’s granddaughter, became the first member of the Royal family to win an Olympic medal today as the Great Britain Olympic team claimed a silver medal during the show jumping portion of the equestrian events at the 2012 London Olympics.

Phillips gave a “disappointing” performance at Greenwich Park but her teammates Tina Cook, Mary King and William Fox-Pitt were able to keep Team GB on the podium.

Yahoo reports that Zara Phillips and her horse High Kingdom hit one of the obstacles on the course and were docked 7-points. Her teammate Tina Cook, however, gave a nearly flawless performance and secured the silver medal for the British Olympic Team.

Cook said:

“To be honest [I was] just trying to focus on jumping a clear round… The team has done so well and it was so close, we could have got silver or nothing, and that would have been awful. Gold would have been brilliant, silver is fantastic.”

According to the Telegraph, Phillips is only the second member of the royal family to compete in the Olympics. Her mother, the Princess Royal, competed in 1976 but failed to win a medal. Her father, Captain Mark Phillips, won a gold medal at the 1972 Olympics but it was before he married into the royal family.

And as a member of the royal family, Zara Phillips had a lot of high-profile fans in the stands. The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge (Kate Middleton and Prince William), Prince Harry, the Duchess of Cornwall (Camilla), Princess Beatrice and Princess Eugenie were all in the crowd.