The royals are known for their love of sport, particularly Princess Anne. The talented royal was the first member of the British Royal Family to compete in the Olympics when she rode the Queen's horse, Goodwill, in the equestrian three-day event at the 1976 Montreal Olympic Games.
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Yet the 71-year-old royal's Olympic debut didn't go to plan after Goodwill failed to make one of the jumps on the course, bringing the Princess down with the fall. Anne quickly remounted her horse, but reports reveal that the Princess Royal remembered little of the rest of the course, having suffered from a concussion during the accident.
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Onlookers included the Queen, Prince Philip, Prince Edward, Prince Andrew and Prince Charles, who flew to Montreal, Canada, to support Anne in the prestigious sporting event.
Despite her seemingly swift recovery, the Princess later admitted in an interview: "It was going very well and then I don’t remember anything else. Nothing at all."
Princess Anne with the Queen's horse, Goodwill
Luckily the royal equestrian was wearing a helmet, otherwise, her injuries could have been far worse. A study published in the Journal of Neurosurgery found that horseback riding contributed to 45.2 per cent of all sports-related brain injuries.
Anne's former lady-in-waiting, Jane Holderness-Roddam, recalled the series of events when interviewed for ITV's documentary, 'Anne: The Princess Royal at 70'.
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Princess Anne's lady-in-waiting, a fellow equestrian, watched the 1976 Olympics on the television. She explained: "What I didn’t know at the time was she had this awful fall, but she got back on and competed.
"She was that concussed that she couldn’t remember - and still to this day I believe can’t remember - the rest of the course."
The royal sustained a head injury at the 1976 Olympics in Montreal
Princess Anne's 1976 accident isn't the only time the royal sustained equestrian-related injuries.
Just three years prior, the Queen's daughter was forced to withdraw from the European Equestrian Championships in Kiez after a heavy fall. She and her horse Goodwill fell at a difficult double fence in the cross-Country section.
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