Stephen Lock / i-Images, PacificCoastNews.comHappy 30th birthday, Pippa Middleton!
The new aunt is celebrating her milestone birthday today, and in honor of the big 3-0, the brunette beauty is taking a look back on her days of playing school sports, sharing some of her "fondest memories" of her early athletic endeavors.
And while the party planner was undoubtedly a fierce competitor, she couldn't help but confess her innocent crush on her coach, as well as her biggest defense mechanism: her derriere.
"When I close my eyes and think about school sports, I envisage myself on the hockey pitch, stick in hand, a luminous gumshield locked on to my chops and a bandana across my forehead. (Bandanas were all the rage back then)," the always-fashionable star writes in The Spectator. "I can also hear the booming voice of Mr Markham, our fierce but undeniably fanciable coach, urging us all on."
"My knees and knuckles are badly grazed from the astroturf, my shins are battered and bruised from the bully-offs. But my focus is on winning and making sure that my hair — fashioned into a slick Sporty Spice ‘up do' — is just right. Did I mention the boys watching?," she recalls.
She continues, noting how hockey was her favorite sport, saying she was "proud" to be team captain before sharing her memories of playing netball the following term.
"My petite physique enabled me to nip and tuck my way past the bigger-chested girls," she remembers. "Elbows always helped; as did the derriere for defense (my ‘chest' hadn't developed back then) and a bit of shoulder-barging here or there. It was brutal, but turns out to have been very useful practice for handling the media in later life."
Middleton also touches on her time on the track field, explaining that cross-country was "one of the most grueling compulsory school activities," in which she was always forced to partcipate.
"Unlike many of my friends who ‘suddenly got the flu', we Middleton girls were always at the starting line — albeit reluctantly — fuelled by Lucozade tablets and bananas," she writes. "Rain was inevitable and we'd get caked in mud from head to toe, in our tiny athletic shorts, white Aertex and all."
If only we could see those pics!
And on the subject of swimming, which she says was "far worse than netball or cross-country," Pippa recalls how "everyone had to walk around sheepishly in tight Speedo bathing suits and streamlined swimming caps, while having to endure "those awkward communal showers, the lingering scent of chlorine and adolescent body odor."'
Luckily for Pippa, life at 30 is far more glamorous.
Earlier this week, rumors began to swirl that Prince George's aunt is engaged to her boyfriend of six months, stockbrokerNico Jackson.
But on Wednesday, she stepped out without a ring amid reports the couple was planning to announce their engagement on Pippa's 30th birthday.
Guess we'll have to wait a little longer to find out if these two are really taking the plunge.
Happy Birthday, girl!