Mon Apr 12, 2021 1:13 pm
#1839964
There's a reality show on Swedish TV with former champions in all kinds of sports where the contestants live together for a week, share experiences and compete in mental and physical games. (You might have a similar show in the UK; it's a Dutch or Belgian format originally.) This year, one of the contestants is a former world champion in the equestrian sport "combined driving", in which Prince Philip was a central figure. Like polo, it was a sport for the very rich, but the Swedish athlete was a farmer so he struggled with money and sponsors.
When this guy got started, Prince Philip had a lot of influence and the sport's governing bodies and was instrumental in banning any sort of advertising on the carriage and the contestant's clothes. The message was clear: if you can't afford it out of your own pocket, you don't belong. Eventually, as a new generation of not-so-posh athletes from many countries started to be good, they did relinquish the ban and allowed sponsors.
I knew next to nothing about the sport, so it was interesting hearing the ex-champion explain and to see clips from his career. By pure coincidence (the show was taped last summer and scheduled months in advance), the episode where we got to see the combined driving aired yesterday, just two days after the passing of HRH PP.
Autocorrect is so frustrating. It's always making me say things I didn't Nintendo.