Eventer Zara Phillips Marries in Scotland

Zara Phillips marries Mike Tindall in Scotland

Weddings aren't usually big on this blog but this weekend British eventer Zara Phillips got married so I thought a little comment was in order. For anyone who doesn't know her - she is a former Eventing World Champion, BBC Sports Personality of the year in 2006, and one of the UK's Olympic hopes. Plus, although she plays this down as much as possible, she's the Queen of England's granddaughter.

Zara Phillips world champion on Toytown

Zara Phillips Badminton

Eventing is far from easy - she's broken a collarbone among other injuries - but it's the more the huge effort she makes to mostly pay her own way and avoid the celebrity-value of being born into the royal family that brings her in here. It would be so easy to sit back and let The Family take care of her, but she walks her own path.

Some friends saw her jump in Dublin at few months back at the Tattersalls International CIC where she rode really well but was forced to retire on Lord Lauries. So she's still looking out for that perfect horse to make an Olympic medal a reality. She is officially retiring Toytown this week at the Festival of British Eventing.

In the meantime, she's so committed that her honeymoon was put on hold - only two days allowed. It probably doesn't help that her now-husband plays rugby for England and has a wee competition - the World Cup - coming up soon. Training first all-round then.

In an interview here, she said: "She said: 'You go about choosing the horses you get on with. It is very much a partnership sport so you have to work on everything together to get the job done, that would be the most important way of looking for the right horse. Taking part in London would be a massive dream for me personally, the pinnacle of my career, because everyone wants to go to the Olympics in every sport, so it would be a massive honour."

How's your cruciate?

pic from balls.ie

Non-sporting types would probably give that post-title a skip. But if you're like me, every twinge and ache gets examined before that big sigh of relief; oh, it's just a sprain, nothing serious. Until the big ones fall apart and then you know all about it.

So far, *touches wood* my knees are in one piece. But cruciate ligament injuries are becoming so prevalent here in Ireland, one national association, the GAA, is setting up a project to guinea-pig 30 players in an effort to find the perfect warm-up. One sports journalist said last week that a winning ladies gaelic football team - from my own county of Cork - has had 15 players out with cruciate injuries since 2005. That's half the team. 

This article in one of the Irish papers a few days ago said it's a far more common injury for women than men. And the worrying thing is the experts quoted don't really seem to know why it's an increasing problem. When you talk to older athletes - in their 60s - they say it was a rare injury 'back in the day' so we're doing something wrong. Or maybe just recognising something that was accepted back then?

Dr Pat Duggan from the sports organisation is quoted in the article saying: “It may be that modern players are so phenomenally conditioned from the hips up that when they land on one leg, like in football, the power going through their leg is a lot greater than it was say 10 years ago.” But shouldn't the legs be stronger too - or is the weights-room to blame?

What's the worst injury you've had?