by Unbreakable- The Woman Who Defied the Nazis in the World's Most Dangerous Horse Race (retail) (epub)
Lata must have sensed that, as a Kinský of sorts herself, she had a special relationship with steeplechasing in general and with the Velká Pardubická in particular; Ra may even have argued that she had the pedigree for it. But Lata may also have sensed, and perhaps even discussed with Ra, a wider significance to what he was proposing. Had Zdenko Kinský won in 1901, he would have been the first Czech ever to win the race. Instead, that honour fell to the professional jockey Oldřich Rosák, who won by five lengths the following year on Jour Fix. There was no national celebration: in that pre-war Habsburg world, the Czechs were just one subject people among many. None the less, it was a landmark. And a sense had been starting to develop, even then, that for Czech nationalists there was a particular pleasure to be had from seeing a Czech victor. It wasn’t that they begrudged the foreigners their dominance – it was the Habsburgs they resented, not the English. Yet the Velká Pardubická was supposed to be a test of manhood, a challenge that sorted out the real men from the boys. No patriot would have enjoyed the thought that Czech men weren’t up to it.
By the late 1920s, the question of nationality had taken on a new, different importance. Czechoslovakia was an independent country; its founder was famous for his love of horses; its most prestigious sporting event was Pardubice’s great steeplechase. What could be more natural than for victory in that steeplechase to be seen as a symbol of national vigour; failure as a sign that something was wrong? Just as the British had begun to care deeply about the nationality of the winner of the men’s singles at the All-England Tennis Championships at Wimbledon, so Czechoslovaks began to think of the Velká Pardubická in increasingly patriotic terms: as a contest that needed to be won for the nation.
The question then was whether the responsibility for winning it should be left to the military, or whether it was too important for that. There had certainly been a time, before the war, when the race had been as open as it was difficult: a test at which anyone who was brave or talented enough could have a go. Gentlemen riders such as Willie Moore, from Ireland, and Hector Baltazzi, an Austrian-Levantine banking heir, had shown that it was possible for amateurs not just to complete the Velká Pardubická but to win it; the Kinskýs had shown that aristocrats could be contenders, too; František Bartosch, a military vet from Pardubice with a sideline as a trainer who joined Rosák on the race’s roll of honour in 1912, had shown that you didn’t even have to be rich. War had interrupted that particular train of collective thought, but there was every reason for reboarding it now – especially if you were a German-speaking aristocrat wishing to show your solidarity with the new nation. By 1926, the Velká Pardubická had been going for more than half a century. The 1927 race, in which Ra wanted Lata to ride, would be its forty-sixth running. Its profile had rarely been higher, and its outcome, in consequence, had rarely mattered more. The cavalry officers could think what they liked. For owners, trainers and riders, the race was coming to be seen as much more than a private test of military riding skills. Rather, it was becoming a kind of Czechoslovak dream: a contest of supreme difficulty in which anyone who rode a horse and was brave enough could try to win glory for themselves and their nation.
This was the dream that Lata was now being urged to share, and then to turn into reality. No wonder she felt anxious. No wonder she felt excited. But it can hardly have escaped her notice that there was a difficulty. She had never ridden in an official race before, even on the flat. As a woman, she wasn’t allowed to. How could she possibly compete in the hardest steeplechase of all?
12.
Stepping up
In the spring of 1927, Ra was elected president of the Prague Jockey Club. He took his duties seriously and made sure to attend every race meeting at Velká Chuchle. He often visited Řitka on the way from Orlík. Sometimes he even stayed overnight.
His visits lightened the mood of a house bereaved. That January, Lata’s mother had died. She was fifty-four. Ill health, bereavement and worry had cast a shadow over her later years; her absence was an altogether darker matter. Leopold was inconsolable. Eventually, he found an outlet for his pain by having a family tomb built in the woods, in a clearing full of birdsong at the brow of the hill, near his favourite spruce, and near the chapel he had built twenty years earlier. The rough stone cross is still there today, although the fittings have been damaged and the woods have closed in. In practical terms, Lata probably had more to do with its construction than Leopold did, but in due course the old count oversaw the transfer of Johanna’s remains from the church cemetery in Líšnice, along with those of his mother and his eldest son. It was obvious that he longed to be reunited with them. He did not have long to wait.
Lata mourned, too. Yet in other respects this was a time of exciting and positive change in her life. That same spring, probably with the encouragement of both Ra and Kasalický, she applied to the Jockey Club for a licence as a ‘gentleman rider’ or amateur jockey. The application was successful, as was that of another female ‘gentleman’ , Růžena Mašková. The granting of the licences may have reflected Ra’s influence, or Kasalický’s, but may equally have reflected something stranger: times really were changing.
Up to a point, anyway. Early hopes of a golden age of gender equality in the new Czechoslovakia had faded slightly. The Constitution said one thing; legal and social precedent another. Most women were still constrained by traditional preconceptions about the roles of the sexes, and by traditional habits of male behaviour. Yet there was still a sense that, if individual women seized the moment boldly enough, those preconceptions could be changed. In Czechoslovakia, the indefatigable Františka Plamínková had formed the Women’s National Council in 1923, to give scores of disparate feminist groups a united and audible voice. There was a sense of change in the wider world, too, as the rhythms of the jazz age made themselves felt. If you read the newspapers, you could see that talented women were achieving fame on a grand scale, and with it wealth and influence. Coco Chanel in fashion, Greta Garbo in film, Josephine Baker in jazz, Georgia O’Keeffe in art, Dorothy Parker in the world of letters: these were movers and shakers as well as high achievers. They had had to fight for their success, far harder than a man would have done. But at least it was success, and perhaps that gave confidence to other women. In Czechoslovakia, women who tried to assert themselves in the 1920s included writers such as Božena Benešová, Jožka Jabůrková, Milena Jesenská and Marie Majerová, who achieved prominence that spanned literature, journalism and radical politics. In parliament, feminists and social reformers such as Milada Horáková acquired real influence. The actress Anny Ondra became not just a screen celebrity but co-founder of a film studio. The fashion designer Božena Horneková created new kinds of ‘mannish’ womenswear for leisure and sport. The surrealist artist Toyen – born Marie Čermínová – even publicly disavowed his/her birth gender, without adopting a new one. (This required quite an effort of will, given the Czech language’s obsession with gender.) The barriers were still there, but for the truly determined they were not insuperable.
It would be a while before the jazz age reached Řitka, and many of these pioneers were in any case far removed, culturally, from the deep conservatism of Lata’s family. But she must have sensed the winds of change blowing through the world of sport. Even if she missed the news that the American Gertrude Ederle had in 1926 become the first woman to swim the English Channel, Lata would certainly have heard about the Czech bank-clerk-turnedracing- driver Eliška Junková, the so-called ‘queen of the steering-wheel’ . The tiny, ever-smiling Junková had astonished both the sporting and the mainstream media with her exploits in the hitherto male world of motorracing: first as her husband’s mechanic and co-driver and then, from 1924, as a driver – and race winner – in her own right. Driving a cigar-shaped Bugatti Type 30, she became the first woman to win a Grand Prix race, in the 3,000cc c lass, at the Nürburgring in Germany in 1927 – although her big ambition to win the driver’s championship remained unrealised. Her racing career would
come to an abrupt and tragic end in July 1928, when her husband was killed in a crash at the Nürburgring. She never had the heart to race again. And yet, as she reflected in later life: ‘I proved that a woman can work her way up to the same level as the best of men.’
The wider world was increasingly full of sportswomen who wanted to prove similar points in their own fields. One of the most impressive was a Frenchwoman called Alice Milliat. Born in Nantes in 1884, Milliat had excelled as a competitive rower before turning to teaching and translation, from which she earned a modest living. A childless widow, with no visible connections in high places, she had been campaigning with astonishing vigour since the end of the war for women to be allowed to compete at the Olympics in mainstream events such as track and field, rowing, fencing and equestrianism. Baron Pierre de Coubertin, founder of the modern Olympic movement, was contemptuously opposed to the idea: he believed that women’s sport was ‘against the laws of nature’ and asserted that the primary role of women at the Olympic Games should be ‘to crown the victors’ . Milliat refused to concede. In 1921 she was elected president of the Fédération sportive féminine internationale (FSFI), which she had helped found, and in 1922 she organised the first Women’ s Olympic Games, in Paris. Czechoslovakia was one of five competing nations. Seventy-seven women took part, watched by 20,000 spectators; the sprinter Marie Mejzlíková was the star Czechoslovak performer.
Four years later, despite the fact that the International Olympic Committee had promised a few grudging concessions on female participation, Milliat’s Games were held again. Renamed the Women’s World Games – in deference to the angry protests of the ‘real’ Olympic movement – they were held in Gothenburg, Sweden. Nine nations competed, with the UK, France, Czechoslovakia and Switzerland, which had competed (alongside the US) in 1922, being joined by Belgium, Latvia, Poland, Sweden and Japan. It was striking –at least, it is striking with hindsight –that the world’s most democratic nations were keener on this sort of thing than everyone else. The Czechoslovaks once again came fourth in the medals table. Marie Vidláková won gold in the shot put.
Equestrianism never featured in the Women’s World Games, despite being a men-only sport in the Olympics. Yet Lata and Ra would have been aware of the movement Milliat had started (especially when Prague was lined up to host the 1930 Games) and so would Ra’s colleagues in the Jockey Club. Women in sport were standing up for themselves, with unprecedented confidence, with the implicit support of Czechoslovakia’s president. If some of them chose to seek licences to ride competitively, who were the gentlemen of the Jockey Club to refuse them?
That May, as a further sign that times were changing, an officially sanctioned race for women riders – or ‘Amazons’ , as the press insisted on calling them – was held at Velká Chuchle. Kasalický must have been instrumental in making this happen, perhaps for the sole purpose of pleasing Lata. The horse she rode was one of Kasalický’s best hurdlers, Vae Victis, a pleasant, obedient horse which Lata probably knew well from riding out. But the six-year-old lacked the speed to win a seven-furlong flat race. Lata finished third, just behind Růžena Mašková. The other two riders, including the winner, Miss Friedländer, presumably had licences from Austria or Germany. Spectators generally were said to have found the event ‘extraordinarily interesting’ . And although there were some who disapproved – the racing periodical Dostihy denounced the race as a ‘circus’ – Národní listy’s reporter was sufficiently impressed to urge: ‘It would be good to remember the ladies at future meetings.’
That summer, Lata continued to visit the Kinskýs when she could: mainly at Orlík but also, at least once, at their hunting lodge at Obora. ‘I worked diligently with my horses,’ Ra explained later, and Lata ‘was a great help to me.’ But he, too, was a help to her, advising her on technique during mornings spent riding and jumping at the special racetrack that Oktavian Kinský had made near Kolesa. Then, in the afternoon, they would take the brood mares and their foals to the big Žehuňský pond, below the lodge. The Bohemian interior can be stiflingly hot, and the horses appreciated the still, cool waters.
It may have been at one of those morning sessions that Ra introduced Lata to Nevěsta. Sired by Chilperic out of Nedejse, the mare was in Ra’s view ‘somewhat crazy’ . She may have been past her prime, too. But she knew how to jump, and in Lata’s hands she became biddable. ‘She began to respond to me particularly well,’ Lata recalled later. ‘The way she listened to me was extraordinary.’ The implication was obvious: Lata should ride Nevěsta in the Velká Pardubická.
There was no final decision: Ra had three other horses lined up for the race as well: Nedbal, Golubčík and Horymír. But with Nevěsta provisionally identified as Lata’s ride, her preparations acquired a frightening urgency. It’s one thing having a vague plan to ride in a race – or having a broad yearning to compete on equal terms with steeplechasing army officers. Now those aspirations had a specific, urgent focus: this horse, this year, in Pardubice, on Sunday 9 October. Such hard nuggets of reality have punctured many an airy dream. For the first time, Lata had to decide. Was she a doer? Or just a dreamer?
It did not take her long to make up her mind. If Ra was up for it, so was she – even though she had raced formally only once and had been jumping serious obstacles for probably less than a year. There were still several months in which to get to know Nevěsta and, when she could, practise on the jumps at Kolesa. It was a steep learning curve, but it was not insurmountable.
But there was still one big unknown: how would Ra’s plan go down with the men Lata would be trying to beat?
13.
The first hurdle
It went down like a plate of steaming horse manure.The boldness of the men who rode at Pardubice did not extend to daring new social attitudes. If they scoffed happily at physical danger, the prospect of riding alongside a woman filled them with horror.
When news broke that Ra had entered Nevěsta in the Velká Pardubická with Lata riding, the backlash was swift and fierce. The other riders protested, with the loudest objections coming from the army officers.
Their argument was as simple as it was forcefully expressed. The Velká Pardubická was a test of manhood; a test of martial virtues. Even war-hardened soldiers were stretched to their limits by it. It was far too tough for a woman; far too dangerous for a woman. No honourable officer of the Czechoslovak army could go along with such a grotesque stunt. And what if, by some freak chance, Lata did not come last? Anyone she beat would be dishonoured for ever.
We cannot say with certainty which individuals led the campaign to keep Lata out of the Velká Pardubická, but we know that there were eight army officers among the twelve other riders who eventually started the 1927 race. Count Alexander de la Forest, a visiting French cavalry officer, seems unlikely to have had much to do with any protests. The other seven were Second Lieutenant Ferdinand Mikeš, Lieutenant Hynek Býček, and captains Antonín Eisner, Sergěj Bezuglij, Josef Charous, Rudolf Pimpl and Rudolf Popler. Of these, the most influential voices would have belonged to Popler, Pimpl, Charous and Býček, old Pardubice hands who had all raced in the previous year’s Velká Pardubická and were used to thinking of themselves as being as tough as they came.
They were not bad men. Several were admired for their character. Popler, for example, an instructor at Pardubice’s military riding school, had fought on the Italian front as a teenager. This would be his fourth Velká Pardubická; his eventual total would be nine. He had won the previous year’s race, on his own horse, All Right II – despite falling at both Taxis and the Big Water Jump. A magnificent horseman – he competed as an Olympic showjumper in Paris in 1924 and would do so again in Amsterdam in 1928 – he was also wonderfully gifted as a nurturer of horses, with a gentle, empathetic approach that had something in common with Lata’s. He had bought All Right II for a knockdown price after she had been declared unfit to ride ever again.
By most standards, Popler was a hero: an inspiringly brilliant
rider who was also, in the words of a friend, ‘every inch a gentleman’ . Self-contained yet charismatic, he was idolised by his peers, both for his talent and for his noble, romantic character. He enjoyed female company – and indeed co-owned All Right II with the eccentric Irma Formánková, a keen equestrian and would-be rally driver. But accepting that there was a place for women in horse racing was quite different from accepting that that place was in the saddle, competing alongside experienced soldiers in Europe’s toughest steeplechase. Popler’s sense of duty required him to protect women from danger, not to allow them to be exposed to it gratuitously.
Hynek Býček, similarly, was and is widely admired, as a fine rider and as a soldier of integrity and courage. In later life he would be a hero of the anti-Nazi resistance; later still, his dissent against the Communists earned him several years in the notorious Mírov prison. His courage was beyond doubt. But I have never heard it suggested that he was socially progressive.
And then there was Josef Charous, older and heavier than the others but no less fearless. He was tough and skilled enough to have come second and fourth in the previous two Velká Pardubickás, as well as competing in the three-day event in the 1924 Olympics. He, too, was a man of integrity, who had fought bravely in the First World War. (In the Second, he would die in Auschwitz.)
