I live in an area where horse farms dot the countryside and driving the back roads one can not fail to be impressed by the magnificent thoroughbreds grazing in the pastures.
But what about an average bay mare named Jubilee who had never raced or competed? How could that horse be special?
Back in the early 1940s Lis Hartel of Denmark had been in love with horses since childhood. Both of Lis’s parents rode, but not professionally. Lis decided she wanted to try dressage, and her preliminary attempts showed great promise.
Then in 1944, Denmark was engulfed in a polio epidemic. At the young age of 23, Lis contracted the debilitating disease. To complicate matters, she was pregnant with her second child.
After the successful delivery of the baby, the doctors informed Lis that she would most likely never ride again. Although she began rehabilitation immediately, a permanent paralysis existed from her knees down.
With encouragement from her husband and parents, Lis worked her muscles daily, determined to prove the doctors wrong.
Here is where Jubilee enters the story.
Jubilee was a thoroughbred mare who belonged to Lis’s family. Neither a race horse nor a dressage horse, Jubilee was ridden for light exercise. With Lis unable to use her legs to nudge or guide a horse, she needed an intelligent animal who would be able to discern commands via weight shifts in the saddle.
Lis decided to incorporate Jubilee into her next part of rehabilitation. To further complicate the issue, Lis’s arms and hands had never regained their former strength, so she knew she would have to completely rely on Jubilee’s understanding of the weight shift.
Lis and Jubilee began training together, and entered the 1947 Scandinavian Riding Competition. They won second place.
Lis’s dream had always been to compete in the Olympics, but the equestrian sport of dressage was not open to women; only commissioned military officers were allowed to compete.
Then, in 1952, the rules changed.
Knowing it was a long shot, and that Jubilee would need more professional training, Lis drove the two of them to train for the Olympics, in spite of her lasting paralysis.
Her competition in the 1952 Helsinki Olympics became legend.
She was one of four women to be the first females to compete in dressage in the Olympics. And although she had to be lifted up onto Jubilee’s back, together they went on to win the Silver Medal.
When the horns blew for the athletes to mount the Olympic Podium to receive their medals, the crowd watched astonished as Henri Saint Cyr of Sweden, the Gold Medal Winner, walked over to Lis, helped her down from Jubilee’s back, and carried her to the platform to receive her medal.
Four years later, Lis and Jubilee competed in the 1956 Stockholm Olympics. Once again, they won the Silver Medal in dressage.
Lis Hartel had changed the world’s perception of people with disabilities.
Although she planned to continue to compete with Jubilee, the mare developed an incurable leg infection one year after the Stockholm Olympics, and did not survive.
Lis continued to ride, but never again in the Olympics.
Instead, she put her energies into opening the first European therapeutic riding center for people with disabilities.
Interviewed in her 87th year, Lis said that the riding center was her most proud achievement, but her best memory was of Jubilee at the ’52 Olympics.
We salute both the woman and her horse.
Thank you to Diane Helentjaris for telling me about Lis Hartel and to Lorraine Jackson’s excellent research on Lis’s life.
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