Now that the scrappy urban tramp of old is a preening member of the equestrian landed gentry, it was only a matter of time before Madonna suffer the consequences: three cracked ribs, a broken collarbone and a broken hand.
"Madonna fell off a new horse she was riding at Ashcombe House, her country house outside of London," spokeswoman Barbara Charone said.
Madonna's house has a name.
"The star was celebrating her 47th birthday with her husband, film director Guy Ritchie, and her two children, Lourdes and Rocco," Charone elaborated.
US spokeswoman Liz Rosenberg said, "She's spent a lot of time riding when she's out in the country."
Will the accident disrupt plans to promote her next album, Confessions On a Dancefloor, due in November? Rosenberg said, "She's walking and talking. I don't know if she's going to be hanging from a disco ball anytime soon."
For an article in Vogue last month, Madonna discussed her tweedy lifestyle on the 1,200 acre estate, which she and Ritchie bought in 2001. "We just fell in love with it. In the summertime it's the most beautiful place in the world ... I go for lots of long walks, ride my bike. It's a very physical place, a place for adventure. You can choose to go there to work in a very undistracted way and a very contemplative way, or you can go there and get lost in the environment. 
"I always feel really melancholic when I'm driving away. I think if you're a photographer, if you're a painter, if you're a writer it's the perfect place to be. You feel protected because you're sunk into that valley, and as far as the eye can see you can't see another house. It's a kind of buffer against the world."
Until you fall off your horse.
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Mark Sahm
Thank you for resisting any 'lucky star' or 'like a virgin' jokes, EO.
Seems like a lot of celebrities get hurt on either horses or motorcycles. Which do you think is worse?
2 - Eric Olsen
I think horses are the spawn of Satan, but motorcycles are extremely dangerous, especially if you don't take learning how to ride them seriously. In any collision, motorcycles always lose, so you have to steer clear and be very alert.
I'm sorry she got hurt but it's also funny as hell
3 - Mark Saleski
i fail to understand horseback riding.
they're big, scary and don't have an OFF switch.
4 - Nancy
I fail to understand why anybody with a life would care about anything pertaining to this talentless trashie.
5 - Eric Olsen
are you calling me lifeless?
6 - Bob A. Booey
I own one Madonna CD single. Can anyone guess what it is?
This tragedy is going to set her yoga and Kabbalah super-powers way back for a while.
The worst motorcycles are those tiny Japanese rice rocket/racer bikes. They go way, way too fast (most can top 150 mph) and are way, way too light and easy to flip over. I keep hearing of accidents involving these, including a couple of acquaintances and an accident that ended basketball player Jay Williams's career (although he's now working on a fruitless comeback). Anyone who gets on a speed bike has a death wish, especially those who aren't trained in how to ride them. But there's a whole bunch of idiots who like to race these late at night -- one bike racer got caught on a highway in Chicago doing something like 170 mph at 5 am and got big, big trouble.
That is all.
7 - Eric Olsen
I agree, BAB - and don't forget Kellen Winslow Jr.
8 - Temple Stark
justify my love
9 - Mark Sahm
Booey: 'This Used To Be My Playground'?
10 - Eric Olsen
"Papa Don't Shine a Ray of Light on My Virginal Holiday"
11 - ClubhouseCancer
She needs, like, a surgeon.
12 - Eric Olsen
CHORTLE!
13 - Bob A. Booey
No, not yet. I'll come back later and give props if anyone else gets it.
I'm saying a prayer for you today, Madonna. You're my favorite Detroit white trash turned pop tart turned freak sex artist turned jock DNA dumpster turned hippie mystic diva turned world's worst actress turned affected, accented British gentrymom. If anyone's seen an interview of Madonna in the last few years, she's almost incapable of normal human speech now. Even during her ill-fated Will & Grace guest appearance (the first ring of celebrity career hell after the equally ill-fated "Swept Away"), she blinked madly while delivering every line in that pretentious faux-British accent of hers. I can only imagine what she's like on pain meds with the constant blinking and inability for her royal skankness to make eye contact with the hospital staff.
That is all.
14 - Demi
Horses don't have split hooves and chew the cud; what on earth was she thinking?
I guess it's now proper for Maddy to ride the horse, rather than the choreographer....
Bob A. Booey has the definition down pat. Thanks Bobby!
15 - Victor Plenty
Split hooves and cud-chewing make for good eating (if Kabbalah devotees even have to eat kosher). Those traits got nothing to do with riding. You can ride a pig if you want and still be kosher. You'd probably need to wash thoroughly before cooking or eating, but you'd want to do that after pig-riding anyway, even if you didn't care about kosher.
Riding a horse has a number of advantages over riding a pig, which I shall now refrain from enumerating.
If you really want to understand why people like to ride horses, there are many willing to explain their motivations, sometimes at great length. But if you don't share their tastes, the explanations all amount to paraphrases of the famous mountain climber's explanation: "Because it's there."
16 - Nancy
I dunnooo...lotsa people around the world think horses are good eating, too. I wouldn't care to eat Mr. Ed, myself, tho.
17 - Eric Olsen
if I was really hungry I would
18 - Victor Plenty
Split hooves and chewing the cud refer to kosher laws. Horseflesh is definitively not one of the kosher meats, precisely because horses lack both of those traits.
19 - WTF
It wouldn't surprise me if "Maddy" has rode a pig or two in her day.
20 - Demi
Notwithstanding, in the British vernacular; Madonna has tossed a few in her day.
21 - emmarose
In pictures that I see of madonna with guy, she never smiles and i think realizes she made a huge mistake marrying an englishman not because he sucks or anything but because it is so foreign to anything she knows so she might be a better actress than any of us have ever realized. she i think is truly miserable in her life right now with no movie career, a stalled music career, and noone caring about her anymore cause she's old and past her time. but she still tries to be heard from one way or another. she really needs to just go away.
22 - Laughing Out Loud
"Horses don't have split hooves and chew the cud."
No, but Madonna does!!!
23 - Ohmystars
Horses, like most animals, are good judges of character. It probably hated this nervous, egomaniacal, short-tempered crow on its back.
Pigs are not kosher in Jewish dietary law, I have no idea how that all started, but why that pig known as Madonna is allowed in a synogogue at all is weird!
Her fans were holding some all-night death watches over her broken hand. They are worse than rabid Beatlemaniacs. The few fans she has left still insist that she's a genius, when all she has done is steal ideas from every dead celebrity she can think of. Maybe this was her Liz Taylor idea! Oh, excuse me, Madonna fans call theft "paying homage." She was spotted not too long ago at a Kylie concert, and lo and behold! Her new cd cover art looks remarkably like a Kylie photo shoot!
I wish the horse had thrown her into the chimney..
24 - Eric Olsen
I haven't found Madonna particularly interesting of late, and I am very disappointed in her acting "career," but I can't imagine why have this level of bitterness toward her
25 - Reply To Eric Olsen
Eric, your comment sounds kind-of like a disclaimer of some sort. Don't be afraid to let it show if you happen to despise this b*tch. She has been in our faces literally, for YEARS, all forcing us to look at her smug face and rancid crotch if we dared turn on the TV or browse through a magazine. Maybe this wouldn't be so bad by itself, but consider the well-known facts that she treats her fans like sh*t (unless she knows a camera is watching) and rips off countless other people ("inspiration"), and you have a really vile media whore.