Polo star delivers his daughter – on the M4!
AS ONE of the country’s top polo players, Charlie Hanbury is well used to feats of daring and highspeed dashes.
But nothing could have prepared the 34-year-old for trying to get his pregnant wife Yoanna to hospital in time to give birth to the couple’s third child.
Despite his best efforts, he was forced to pull over during the frantic journey along the M4 near Slough and heroically deliver the baby girl himself at the roadside.
The couple, who live in Hungerford, Berkshire, have called their new arrival Catinka, which is Russian for ‘pure’.
The pair – who were named the best-dressed couple at Princess Eugenie’s lavish wedding to Jack Brooksbank in 2018 – had intended to welcome their baby at a nearby hospital but instead their daughter was born on January 15 in slightly less glamorous surroundings – just off exit seven of the M4.
Shortly after Charlie posted a picture of Catinka on his Instagram account to show her off to friends, one of them joked: ‘The most beautiful thing to come out of Slough.’
The Hanburys also have two other daughters – Cressida, aged two, and Cara, four.
Polo-playing Yoanna, 32, the daughter of German princess Anna Oettingen-Wallerstein, met her husband, a scion of a landed family, through the sport. They are known as polo’s ‘dream couple’ because of their movie-star good looks.
Charlie, one of Britain’s most successful polo players, reached the final of the Gold Cup and has won the Cartier Trophy, as well as being part of the winning El Remanso team which won the Gold Cup in 2018.
At Princess Eugenie’s wedding that year, Yoanna won over fashion pundits with a series of stunning dresses including a cornflower blue midi by Roksanda for the ceremony at Windsor Castle and a glittering gold evening gown by Reem Acra for the lavish evening party at The Royal Lodge, Windsor.
She was nine months pregnant at the time with Cressida.