by Unbreakable- The Woman Who Defied the Nazis in the World's Most Dangerous Horse Race (retail) (epub)
It remains her label, and until her story finishes finding its way back into the collective consciousness it will continue to be widely used. After more than eighty years, it is still a glorious descriptor, summarising a sporting achievement as awe-inspiring as it was improbable. Yet perhaps a greater achievement is the certainty that, one day, part of the label will cease to be true. She will always be the first. She will not always be the only.
Epilogue
The good and faithful servant
On a bright May morning in Řitka, on the rough green slope behind the house, the crisp air shivers with the thud of hoof on turf. Some recent recruits to the Prague police are undergoing essential training. Their teacher is Gabriela Křístková. Their classroom is a patch of cool field, just beyond the garden wall, sheltered by clusters of high, tilting sycamores. Their lesson is in jumping: a valuable skill, it seems, in a modern urban force whose duties include crowd control.
Lata used to practise her jumping on much the same patch a lifetime ago. Today’s tuition is delivered with the help of giant logs, arranged into a course of equestrian obstacles: simple jumps, wider jumps, sloping jumps, uphill jumps, ditches, and an up-and-down ‘table’ to be jumped onto and then off again. Lata’s course was probably quite similar.
But these students are struggling. They are Kladruby horses: heavy, placid animals – some black, some grey; solid in body and nature. Their muscular flanks are twitching with exertion; puffs of their warm breath steam in the bright air. But their faces are what you notice. Long, convex foreheads and tufty forelocks make them startlingly expressive, and there is no mistaking the young horses’ thoughts: the jumps both fascinate and baffle them. Anything resembling a normal jump they leap with relish. Less familiar obstacles, such as the ditches and the table, unnerve them.
The challenge for the police officers on their backs is to show them what needs to be done and to coax them into believing they can do it. For some, this takes all morning. Horse after horse lopes eagerly towards the first ditch, which drops slightly from take-off to landing but lacks an above-ground obstacle. Horse after horse shudders to a frightened halt as it realises that there is an unexpected item in the jumping area. Some seem frightened; others merely overwhelmed by puzzlement. Most, having refused once, are more suspicious than ever when asked to try again. Yet somehow, as the morning wears on, each horse is gradually persuaded, until all six have mastered this and several other initially daunting obstacles. Different officers take different approaches: some soothe, some chivvy, some get off and lead. Others find that it helps to let the horse watch while others negotiate it successfully. The common factors are trust and tenderness, used to empower each horse to make that first, frightening leap of faith. It is like watching children learning to ride bicycles.
Actually, there is another common factor. All the riders are women. The observation is worth making because it is unusual to see that kind of gender balance in a group of police officers, in any country. In another respect, it is unremarkable: among riders, all-female is the norm. Gabriela teaches riding skills across a whole spectrum of ages and abilities: to eager child novices, awkward teenagers, experienced equestrians, the sick, the disabled, and to competitive eventers at everything up to international level. Right across that spectrum, an overwhelming majority of her pupils are female.
‘It’s funny,’ she says. ‘I wonder what those army officers would have felt – the ones who didn’t want Lata to race against them – if they looked at what’s happening today. All the people learning to ride are girls. In twenty years’ time there probably won’t be any male riders.’
She exaggerates only slightly. The trend is overwhelming. The 74 per cent figure quoted earlier errs on the low side; in many countries it is nearer 80 per cent. And that, remember, covers all age groups. Focus on young riders starting out in the sport and the gender imbalance is even more pronounced. You can speculate endlessly about the reasons. (For example: boys prefer football and fighting; boys can’t handle commitment; boys are emotionally immature; etc.) You probably shouldn’t. The stereotypes of the modern world can be as limiting as those of the old. Yet not every stereotype is entirely baseless. And this morning I cannot keep a new one out of my head: maybe, when it comes to horses, girls and women are just naturally better at it.
The observation almost makes itself. As the police horses wrestle with their insecurities, the field seems to glow with empathy and nurturing. Each horse has its own learning style, its own quirks and insecurities. The teaching style is feminine. Each officer senses her horse’s needs, then finds ways of delivering the appropriate help. At times it is moving to watch: there is something maternal about the solicitude. The fact that the child figure in the relationship is ten times the size of the mother figure somehow accentuates the vulnerability and tenderness. I can’t help wondering how many men would show such patience or sensitivity.
Such thoughts are simplistic and, probably, patronising. They are unfair, too. There is no law of nature that says that men must be brutish and women sensitive. Yet we talk, sometimes, about masculine and feminine management styles, and people of both genders understand what is meant. Riding is similar. An approach based on domination could be described as a ‘male’ approach, whoever employs it; an approach based on empathy – seeing things from the horse’s point of view – could be described as ‘female’. Ask a female jockey about riding in the Velká Pardubická and the chances are her answer will incorporate the horse’s point of view. ‘You have to let the horse choose the pace it’s comfortable with,’ says Lucie Baluchová; ‘He hates guidance that’s too firm,’ says Martina Růžičková-Jelínková, referring to her favourite Velká Pardubická horse, Charme Look. Ask a man, and in my experience you’re more likely to get an answer with ‘I’ in it. But each gender is capable of either approach. Cutting- edge champions of natural training methods, such as Monty Roberts and Pat Parelli, could be said to deal with horses in a ‘female’ way, yet are no less male for that. The question is: which is more effective – especially when it comes to ultra-tough challenges such as the Velká Pardubická? Most experts would say that it depends on the horse. ‘There are lots of horses who don’t run well with men, and a lot for whom girls are too weak,’ says Růžičková-Jelínková. Stallions often respond better to men. Yet a woman, she believes, ‘puts more spirit in it – and a kind of responsiveness.’ Charlotte Budd agrees. ‘A woman might be more tactful,’ she says, tactfully. ‘A horse might think, “Well, you’re not going to get me to do things by brute force.” But a more subtle approach might work.’ Once again, the horse’s viewpoint is in the foreground.
At the very least, the question is worth looking at with an open mind. Traditionally, a trainer considering using a female jockey for such a race asks himself (it is usually a ‘himself’): ‘Is she man enough to ride in an extreme steeplechase?’ But perhaps it is male jockeys who should prompt the question; and the question should be: ‘Is he woman enough to ride in an extreme steeplechase?’
Lata, asked by a journalist for the secret of riding successfully in the Velká Pardubická, was clear about what was required. ‘The craving for glory alone is not enough,’ she said. ‘There must also be love for the horse.’ This may seem counterintuitive: if you love the horse, why would you ask it to participate in such a dangerous exercise? Her point, I think, was that if you ask in good faith, with love, the horse will do it gladly; if you seek merely to dominate, it will keep something back. ‘With goodness,’ she added, ‘one achieves everything with a horse.’
Every horse understands the dangers of jumping: you have only to watch the novices on the Řitka jumps course to see that. Yet if the right person asks them, in the right way, and is willing to share the danger, a horse will attempt almost anything.
As the lesson draws to an end, the young police horses assemble with their mostly dismounted riders near where I am standing. They seem exhilarated: buzzing with achievement. The nearest horse is close enough f
or me to feel his warm exhalations and, momentarily, the brush of his silk-soft nose against my ear. I glance up to the nearest of his big brown eyes, expecting curiosity, but he is not looking at me. His gaze is settled on his rider, just in front. It is a gaze of trust and adoration.
Lata’s formula – ‘love for the horse’ – left something out. There must also be love from the horse. You see that in all the most successful pairings: the empowering empathy comes as much from the ridden as the rider. You could feel it here this morning, too, in the renewed courage with which these police horses responded to each brisk pat or leaning whisper, and in the obviously shared delight of horse and rider at each new breakthrough. Pardubice, similarly, has seen many mutually empowering love affairs between rider and horse: Popler and Gyi Lovam!; Lengnik and Herold; Lata and Norma. So has Aintree, from Bruce Hobbs and Battleship to Bob Champion and Aldaniti. The races are brutal. They are also demonstrations of what love between species can achieve.
Love, wrote Lata towards the end of her life, should involve ‘a complete trust, one to another – then the love and affection cannot disappear’. That strikes me as a pretty good description of what passed between her and her horses. But that trust was also tied up with another idea. The horse, she believed, ‘is the noblest animal’ – to be won over ‘like a noble man, through love’. I’m sure she wasn’t thinking of nobility in the dull sense of aristocratic pedigree, any more than Jiří Kocman was when, sharing his memories of Chlumec, he described Lata as ‘a noble lady of rare character’. Rather, each was referring to a more elusive idea: nobility in the sense of that which is best in us. This was the sort of nobility that Socrates had in mind when (according to Plato) he used the image of an immortal horse to embody the better half of the human soul: ‘a lover of honour and modesty and temperance, and a follower of true glory.’ Flesh and blood horses sometimes seem to do the same. They appear stoical, brave, unselfish; wisely contented. In a greedy, agitated world, some people find solace in their profound inner stillness. Yet there is also nobility in the honest joy that a horse takes in doing the things it does best – galloping, jumping, racing; and in the fact that it is both the toughest and the gentlest of creatures; and, often, in the fact that it is great-hearted enough to spend every last ounce of its powers in the heat of battle.
One mystery remains: if the horse is so noble, why is it so biddable? Why does it submit to the constant diversion of its gifts to serve human ends? Is it stupid? Is it servile? Some would say so. Yet the same evidence can be interpreted in the opposite way: perhaps the horse submits because this capacity for patient, loyal, uncomplaining service is another facet of its nobility – perhaps even its essence.
Lata understood that. She understood the paradox of what used to be called horsemanship: the fact that the horse must choose to do as it is asked. She knew that, whether it is the exhaustion of the plough or the terror of the steeplechase, the horse will not only endure beyond all reason but will do so willingly; but only if there is love between human and horse.
Inside the Lata Brandisová mini museum at Řitka, Gabriela guides me through the memorabilia in the glass cabinet. She takes out Lata’s old Communist-era identity card, issued when she was sixty-seven. We flick through its pages. One has a question about military service: ‘Soldier or not a soldier?’ ‘Not a soldier,’ states the handwritten answer.
‘But,’ says Gabriela bitterly, ‘she was more of a soldier than half the men in our army today.’
I have no idea if this is a fair assessment of the fighting men of the Czech Republic. She is right about Lata, though. In the trenches, you would be happy to have someone like her at your side. Any soldier would. There are, of course, still men who insist that women have no place in battle. They have rarely seen active service themselves. Men under fire are generally less concerned with their comrades’ gender (or sexuality) than with whether or not they are brave and true. Lata, to her core, was brave and true.
Yes, she was born into privilege. What made her life memorable was the grace with which she endured hardship. All through her life things were taken from her. She suffered hurt after hurt, physical and emotional, and spent the last thirty years of her life hungry, poor, despised and rejected. Yet she never asked for pity. She had a soldier’s heart.
But her heart was also full of love: the kind of love that, in St Paul’s words, ‘beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things’. That, in a dozen words, was what she did.
‘There are so many people today who complain about absolutely anything,’ Martina Růžičková-Jelínková told me once. ‘Yet this woman, who had so much to complain about, never did. I find it very moving.’ So, suddenly, do I. Lata was extraordinary not just in what she achieved but in how she lived. She gave what she had to give, dreamed and chased improbable dreams, suffered what she had to suffer, and did what she believed was her duty. Each time she encountered a setback, she picked herself up and resumed her journey. She never complained: just quietly endured what was asked of her, as a soldier does; or – in another biblical phrase that must have been familiar to her – as a good and faithful servant does.
Perhaps this was the key to her mystery: the parable of the servant who made the most of the talents entrusted to him. Lata did the same, in a world in which women were constantly encouraged not to use their talents but to bury them. Yet she did so not in a self-seeking way, but dutifully, sticking faithfully to her path with quiet courage.
My eyes wander again to that faded photograph, mentioned much earlier, of Lata and Norma, head by head, radiant in the glow of their great triumph. It is, I realise, a picture of two friends: equals; perhaps even kindred spirits. Lata’s gift for seeing the world through equine eyes was not simply a means to an end. In some ways, I suspect, it was more basic than that: the worldview of the horse actually overlapped with her own.
Horses, for Lata, were her ‘dearest and most faithful friends’; Norma was a ‘good and loyal horse’. But the trust and affection flowed in both directions. She had her faith; the horses had theirs – in her. Both pointed to the same thing: the duty to be a good and faithful servant. And the resulting bond empowered horse and rider to do things together that others said could not be done.
Lata Brandisová was indeed, as Kocman said, ‘A noble lady of rare spirit.’ But the nobility that defined her was not that of a countess. What would be the point of telling her story, if that were all? She was noble in a rarer, more precious way. Hers was the same brave, loyal spirit that animates the great heart of a horse.
Illustrations Insert
The Brandis family, 1903 (from left): Mikuláš, Lata,Gabriele, Marie Therese, Countess Johanna, Kristýna, Alžběta; front row: Johanna, Markéta
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Aftermath of an ‘officers’ race’, the closest the Brandis daughters expected to get to proper race-riding. Lata is on the right.
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The Brandis home at Řitka. The main house is on the left; on the right is the granary.
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Lata on Nevěsta in Pardubice in 1927 . . .
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. . . and on Norma at the water jump in 1933
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Lata (left) after falling with Norma (out of picture) at Taxis in 1935
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Lata and Norma (far left) at the water jump in the 1934 Velká Pardubická
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Lata’s cousin, Zdenko Radslav Kinský (‘Ra’), at his stables in Chlumec nad Cidlinou
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Hanuš Kasalický : more than just a neighbour to Lata?
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Karel Šmejda: the first trainer to recognise Lata’s talents
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Leopold von Fugger at the Pardubice Zameček
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SS-Untersturmführer Hans Schmidt . . .
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. . . and SS-Scharführer (later SS-Obersturmführer) Oskar Lengnik
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‘That was n
ot a crowd. That was a nation . . .’ Mourners in Prague for the funeral of Tomáš Masaryk, September 1937
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Lata, riding Norma, successfully negotiates a water obstacle in the 1937 Velká Pardubická
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Willibald Schlagbaum, riding Quixie (right), does likewise
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‘The race is mine!’ Lata and Norma approaching the finish of the 1937 Velká Pardubická
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The first and only woman to win the Velká Pardubická dismounts after her victory
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Lata and Norma are led through the Pardubice crowd following their historic victory
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Ra (left) and Josef Soukup (wearing his V for Victory sash) escort the triumphant Lata and Norma from the finish
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Lata’s victory was celebrated with a ball at Ra’s chateau, Karlova Koruna
