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Zara Tindall revealed in a candid interview with her husband Mike that she feels guilty for leaving her eldest daughter to be a working mom.
Olympic equestrian medalist and Princess Royal’s daughter said it was “challenging” to return to riding professionally after giving birth to Mia, now nine.
In the first interview episode of Mike Drop in collaboration with the Magic Millions horse racing event, Zara told her husband: “You feel mentally guilty like a mother leaving her child to go and do something else.”
The 44-year-old former England rugby captain joked that he “didn’t trust my father,” but Zara added: “You feel guilty. I always felt guilty, I even liked to go and ride horses and thought, ‘This is a part of my life now.'”
In the following wide-ranging interview, King’s niece also spoke about her struggle to “restore her body” after giving birth to Mia in 2014, and said she’s determined to get back into riding:
She told Mike: “After giving birth to Mia, I was like, ‘That’s right, that’s my goal. I have to come back’ and I had a good horse to come back to, which is great for your confidence, so I wanted to go back for him as well.
“Trying to be a goal to get myself back to her is something I’ve probably always needed. I always need goals in my life and I have always set many goals in my life.
But the 41-year-old added: “When you’ve been riding for 25 years, if your body isn’t doing it completely and your muscles are [are] doing nothing and stretching and creating something amazing – totally different and trying to get your body back to normal. I found [that] hard work.”
Acknowledging that the couple has balanced their career and life as new parents, Zara said Mia “was with us while we were traveling” and that she “was taken to shows a lot”.
The Tindalls, who have been married since 2011, have also touched on their experiences of miscarriage, something Zara has previously disclosed.
Mike said: “Seven years with the kids, your horseback riding has had its ups and downs. We lost a baby on the way. You had to stop riding before that and missed another piece of time.”
He asked Zara if she felt she had given equestrian “everything you wanted to give” at the time.
She told him: “Looking back, maybe there were times when I shouldn’t have gone to certain places. But I guess I was lucky, I got Toytown and High Kingdom. [her horses] and I was in an Olympics and got a silver medal.
“The things I missed belonged to another wonderful chapter of my life, and I’m lucky to be able to put them together.”
Zara added: “I consider myself lucky to be able to do both in our sport and still be able to compete at the top, which is a huge push for me. I hope it has made me a better mother because they can experience it with us and with me.”
The mother of three won a silver medal at the 2012 Olympics in London and became the first Royal Family Olympic medalist.
His mother, the only other member of the royal family to compete at the 1976 Montreal Olympic Games, was the one who presented the team with medals.
Elsewhere in the couple’s 30-minute interview, Zara explained that her love of riding stemmed from her childhood being with horses.
She told Mike: “I remember being around horses and ponies when I was younger and we were really lucky. Mom and Dad were riding horses. Back then it was their career and we used to do a lot of things with them at home.
“If we weren’t at home, we were looking at them in the garden and learning about them.”
Zara says her “driver” now is to win an Olympic gold medal in sports and “would love to go to another Olympics”.
He said: “This is a love. It’s a passion. It’s a lifestyle and so it’s an incredible sport and an incredible discipline. We all invest much more in horses than ourselves.”
