As Thursday’s ESPYs ceremony approaches—where Prince Harry will be honored with the Pat Tillman Award for Service at the L.A. event—Tatler reports that Harry is “stunned” at the negative reaction to his win, and finding it a “bitter pill to swallow.”
Following ESPN’s announcement that Harry had won the award—which is given annually to “a person with a strong connection to sports” and named in honor of Tillman, a former NFL player turned U.S. Army Ranger who died in 2004 in Afghanistan at just 27 years old—backlash ensued. Perhaps most surprisingly was condemnation from Tillman’s mother, Mary Tillman, who told The Daily Mail, among other comments, that she thought there were other “far more fitting” people who should have won the award.
