Sophie, Duchess of Edinburgh, continues to quietly honor her former in-laws. A relaxed and fresh looking Sophie kept it casual and quintessentially country as she was seen practising carriage driving on the Windsor estate. While she’s not the only royal to partake in the sport, there’s a deeper, personal connection for Sophie. Prince Philip bonded with his future daughter-in-law by sharing with her one of his favorite sports when she first married Edward.
- Sophie, Duchess of Edinburgh looked the epitome of countryside cool as she dressed down in blue jeans, brown riding boots and a baseball cap
- She was touchingly continuing a tradition first taught to her by her late father-in-law
- In other royal news, King Charles makes rare public comment about both William and Harry as reunion with his youngest son beckons
Dressed in a waterproof jacket and blue jeans, Sophie, the Duchess of Edinburgh, looked fresh-faced and carefree while on the Windsor estate this weekend.
Keeping things sensible, she donned a practical pair of knee-high brown riding boots and swept her blonde hair up under a Royal Windsor Horse Show branded baseball cap.
Sophie was seen with two women as they were carriage driving – and there’s actually a really sweet reason she took up the sport.
At Prince Philip's memorial in April 2022, Sophie explained how her father-in-law taught her carriage driving in the early days of her marriage to his youngest son Prince Edward - who she married in 1999.
Prince Philip himself first took up carriage driving in 1973 when a wrist injury forced him to stop playing polo.
This was touched upon in season five of The Crown on Netflix. In the second episode of the season, Philip, played by Jonathan Pryce, tells a reporter, “At age 50, I decided to give up the big sporting love of my life and look for new challenges. Which is how I ended up carriage driving.”
In the competitive sport of carriage driving, two or four wheeled carriages are pulled by anywhere between one and four horses.
Prince Philip began his competitive career and by 1980, he was selected to the British Driving Team at the World Championships in Windsor. He would go on to help the British Team win the 1981 European Championships in Switzerland.
One account of someone who researched Philip’s involvement with the sport said that the Queen would regularly come to watch them train, and she was always delighted to see which of her horses were being used.
Prince Philip continued to drive his Fell ponies into his nineties. He wrote, “I am getting old, my reactions are getting slower and my memory is unreliable but I have never lost the sheer pleasure of driving a team through the British countryside.”
And that’s a pleasure which his daughter-in-law is keeping alive.
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