Mia helped us through the sadness
With a new look and a baby on the way, Mike Tindall talks to Elizabeth Grice about Zara’s miscarriage and approaching 40
It must say something about Mike Tindall’s personality that when he had his crooked mountain range of a nose straightened recently, hardly any of his friends noticed. Even the beard he grew to divert attention from the surgery passed without comment for days. A Gloucester taxi driver was the first person to register that the former England rugby captain didn’t look his usual asymmetrical self, inquiring: “Had yer nose done?”
Broken eight times, his nose was the contour map of Tindall’s sporting life – and he misses it. “I loved my nose,” he says. “I didn’t really want to change it but it got to the point where I couldn’t breathe properly, I couldn’t smell properly, my sinuses were blocked, I was getting so many headaches and it was affecting my sleep.
“My actual words to the surgeon were: ‘I just want you to clear my airways and the less you straighten it the better.’ But saying that to a surgeon is probably not good for his trade.”
Among the nicknames he acquired on the pitch were Lord Splat Face and Gonzo. It was said that he must have tackled with his face. “I expected more grief from my friends,” he says, a bit crestfallen. “I’ve never had a beard before but Zara quite liked it, so I kept it.”
He and Zara, the Olympic equestrian daughter of Princess Anne, have got more on their minds than noses and beards at the moment. They are expecting their second child in a month’s time and the waiting, he admits, has been anxious because Zara suffered a midterm miscarriage just before Christmas 2016. “It makes it uneasy, going through the pregnancy. You are always wondering what could be round the corner.”
At the time, there had been no hint that anything was wrong. But when they went for the five-month scan, expecting to know the gender of the baby, they were told that it had died. “It was devastating but you’ve just got to find a way to deal with it,” he recalls. “You look at yourself and ask: Was it our fault? Was it something we did? I like to think that it happened for a reason, perhaps something wasn’t right, otherwise it could eat you up from inside.”
Calm and straightforward, Tindall describes how their boisterous daughter Mia, and their own natural pragmatism, got them through. “With a two-year-old running around like a mad lady, you can’t dwell on it,” Tindall says. “Mia played a role with the mental side of it, giving us a release, a break. We are two easygoing people. It is hard to put us on the back foot. But after something like this you don’t take anything for granted. We were very quickly aware of how precious Mia is and how lucky we were to have her already. You have already been given that gift; you are blessed. If it had been our first one,” he adds, “it would have been so much harder to deal with.”
Tests showed there was no medical cause for the miscarriage, which gave them hope. It was one of those unexplained tragedies suffered by so many parents – far more, he says, than he’d ever suspected, until messages of support started to flood in on social media. “In this day and age you think these things shouldn’t happen but there are aspects of pregnancy and childbirth that they still can’t explain.”
This time round, Zara was not taking part in equestrian events so it
‘I loved my nose, I didn’t want to change it, but it got to the point where I couldn’t breathe’
was easier to keep the pregnancy to themselves for longer. “It was quite a nice buffer,” Tindall says. “It is hard to put the news out there [as happened in 2016] and then for it to go wrong. ”
A natural optimist, his openness is a pleasant jolt to any preconceptions about rugby bloke machismo. “We men haven’t had to go through the biological changes, whatever that feeling is of having something grow inside you, so we can never share the same emotional attachment that comes with it. You are just lucky to see a child born.”
He admits to having felt a bit useless when Mia was tiny: there was only so much he could do. “You wait for the day when they open their eyes and smile and then it’s: Right! I’m in.” Now she’s grown into a headstrong, adventurous, outdoorsy four-year-old, she has completely changed his idea about wanting a boy second time around. “She is such a joy, and not a girlie-girl at all that I would be quite happy with another girl. As soon as a child comes, you love them anyway.”
Now retired from professional rugby (though still coaching and playing for his local team), Tindall readily adjusts his diary to fit in with her activities. Mia swims, rides and already has a set of golf clubs; her elder cousins Savannah and Isla (the daughters of Peter and Autumn Phillips), with whom she is “thick as thieves”, live close by in Gloucestershire.
Though there has been much for the family to celebrate of late, testing times are afoot. For the last six weeks, they have been caught up in a crisis affecting his father, who has Parkinson’s disease.
Phil Tindall, 71, a former banker, was diagnosed 15 years ago but with the help of his wife, Linda, has been able to live independently until recently. Now he is in hospital following a fall that broke his hip, and Tindall and his brother Ian are trying to work out a care plan that will get him back to strength. “It has been a severe strain on my mum, his main carer. My dad gets frustrated with the disease. He can’t be a hands-on grandfather, as he would like. It is hard to believe that this is a guy who I used to wrestle in the back garden.”
His father’s illness has prompted Tindall to throw his weight behind Cure Parkinson’s Trust (CPT), the charity dedicated to finding a cure for the disease. A few days ago, he visited the research laboratory of Roger Barker, professor of clinical neuroscience at Cambridge, to hear about his pioneering work with stem cells and other novel therapies to treat neurodegenerative disorders.
On Friday, in his new role as patron of the charity, Tindall will host a golf day at The Belfry, Birmingham, to raise money for both CPT and the Matt Hampson Foundation, which helps people suffering from life-changing injuries. A similar event last year raised £150,000.
And the following day, he has the small matter of a family wedding. Tindall claims not to know much about the nuptials of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, at which Mia is rumoured to be flower girl, but is clearly delighted that his good friend has found his life partner.
“She is lovely,” he says of the bride-to-be. “They are obviously besotted with each other and that’s all you can ask for. There is a huge wave of support from people wanting them to be happy and successful. Zara and I can only echo that. The cousins are very close.”
Mike Tindall met Phillips in 2003 when he was part of the World Cup-winning squad in Sydney; Princes William and Harry, both keen rugby supporters, were there, too. But Harry had already got to know the sportsman in 2000 when he acquired the first of 75 caps. “He has matured perfectly and found his way,” says Tindall of their near 20-year friendship. “He’s in a great place, where he wants to be. I’m really happy for him.”
Tindall will be 40 in October, an event most men approach with a distinct lack of enthusiasm, but he says he “can’t wait. I genuinely have no issues about getting older. That’s one reason I didn’t want to change the nose,” he adds with another flash of that trademark Tindall optimism. “I had started to grow into my face.”
Mike Tindall hosts a celebrity golf classic supported by ISPS Handa and Artemis on Friday.
Visit cureparkinsons.org.uk and matthampsonfoundation.org to donate
‘After something like this, you don’t take anything for granted’