Zara Phillips fully focused on taking care of her Toy boy

Like her horse, Toytown, swatting a fly with his tail, Zara Phillips dispatched the expected marital question into the Cotswold countryside yesterday.

'I'm not engaged,' she told a television interviewer before repeating the message in a stage whisper to anyone in earshot.

Zara Phillips with Toytown at the Unicorn Trust Equestrian Centre

'Listen out everyone, I'm not engaged. I'm not engaged.' There had been a weekend report taking her relationship with England rugby international Mike Tindall to the next level.

Her mother, the Princess Royal, could impart a lifetime of experience on answering queries about all manner of domestic arrangements.

But, despite having represented Great Britain at Montreal in 1976 and despite her subsequent association with the Olympic movement, she is perhaps less equipped to pass on the experience of competing at the Games.

'She can't remember much about it,' Phillips said. 'She fell off and landed on her head. It was a heavy fall. She knocked her head and they put her back on. She finished the course concussed and does not remember anything.'

By all accounts, the courage displayed by the 26-year-old Princess Anne on that occasion was considerable. But it could not happen now.

For safety reasons, the rules have changed and any rider falling during the Olympics this year will be eliminated.

The thought of an official throwing her mum back into the saddle produces a smile, emphasising as it does her trusty theme that 'things have changed'.

The dangers of the sport have not changed, however. All five members of the team taking part in a GB training session near Stow-onthe- Wold have friends and acquaintances who died in action.

Phillips, 27, suffered a recent fall which looked much worse than it transpired. 'I did land on my head,' she said. 'It is strange. Very often you can have a very heavy fall and walk away. Then you can have one that you think will be fine and you can't get up.

'I had a bad fall about four years ago. The horse was wired to the moon. He went out of the start box and by the fourth fence I had no brakes. He hit it very hard and I was knocked out. I broke my collar bone.'

Phillips has the opportunity to win the medal that eluded HRH. Beating her father will be much harder. Captain Mark Phillips won team gold in Munich in 1972 and 16 years later collected silver in the same event in Seoul.

As coach of the United States, he could face the tantalising possibility of one of his charges and his daughter jumping off for gold. 'Obviously he'll support me,' Phillips said, mulling over the scenario. 'But his job is the Americans. I know I won't talk to him.

'I think we can do an awesome job,' she said, looking ahead to Beijing or rather Hong Kong, the equestrian venue. 'Our aim is to go one better than last time.'

Britain won an eventing team silver in Athens four years ago. Phillips was on course to gain selection in 2004 when Toytown picked up an injury.

Both have made the team this time, though it was obvious as they went through their dressage paces yesterday that these are anxious times.

'The next two months will be very nerve-wracking because the horses can do stupid things and ruin their chance of going out there,' said Phillips.

'The horses have got to compete before they go out there. You can't wrap them up and put them in a box and leave them.'

As if to prove the point, Phillips sat at lunch with her right hand in an ice pack. It was nothing, she insisted, merely bruising. She had been schooling one of her younger horses and caught her fingers between rein and neck.

The problem had been exacerbated by people shaking her hand, though not apparently by way of congratulating her on her engagement.