Eight Years Earlier 1. An Unlikely Olympian Berlin, Germany, 1936 Alois Podhajsky wore the cares of the world on his narrow, melancholy face. His gaze was like a poet''s, directed inward. His oeuvre was the art of classical dressage. His verses danced on four legs. Podhajsky looked as if he''d been born to sit astride a horse. His long straight torso had no awkward angles, no rounded curves, nothing to detract from its elegant lines. But to look at the Austrian officer''s forlorn expression was to understand that within, he carried a shadow.
In 1918, after being severely wounded in the neck while serving in the trenches in Flanders, he had suffered from shell shock. His love for horses had brought him slowly back, but the deep stillness of a defeated warrior never left him. On June 12, 1936, Alois Podhajsky sat astride his mount, Nero, ready to enter the rectangular dressage arena that had been set out with meticulous precision on May Field, a twenty-eight-acre lawn just to the east of the Olympic stadium; it was the site of the Olympic competition in equestrian dressage. The fact that this pair was competing here, in the eleventh Olympic Games, against the top equestrian contenders from around the world, was unlikely indeed. Nero, a gangly brown Thoroughbred, had been bred to race, but having proven slow, he had been cast off for use as an army cavalry mount. The gelding had shown equally little talent as a soldier''s charger, and the army had nearly sold him off before Podhajsky decided that the horse showed potential and saved him from the auction block. Podhajsky too was an almost-reject, kicked out of Austria''s prestigious cavalry officer training school after a back injury made him unable to bend at the waist, forcing him to abandon his first love--jumping. Unwilling to give up his passion, he kept riding even though he had to be lifted onto his horse.
He would never forget the day in 1928, during a cavalry school lesson, when his riding instructor scrutinized Podhajsky''s stiff form in the saddle and said, "You''re finished." But Podhajsky had pressed on, working with his reject mount, dedicating his energy to the art of dressage. Just three years later, Podhajsky had received the Austrian cavalry''s highest honor: In 1931, he was sent to study for two years at the world''s oldest academy of classical riding, the Spanish Riding School. The instruction he received in the classical art of horsemanship was as much a spiritual education as a physical one. Students neither entered their horses in competitions nor vied for any medals. They pursued perfection as an end unto itself. Podhajsky''s love for horses, for riding, for life, had been restored. Five years after being expelled from the cavalry school, Podhajsky was representing his country at the Olympics.
While Nero was neither flashy nor handsome, the gelding was willing and cooperative, and after several years of training, they had risen to the top of the sport: Today, they entered the arena as favorites. Although Podhajsky believed that the Austrian tradition of riding was without peer, he knew that many found his country''s traditions backward-looking. One of Podhajsky''s teammates was the oldest competitor at the entire Games, born way back in 1864. Podhajsky''s own love of Austria''s equestrian traditions had started during his boyhood, and at eighteen, he''d joined the cavalry. Posing for a portrait in 1916, wearing the uniform of his regiment, he looked younger than his eighteen years. His ornate uniform--fur-muffed, spike-helmeted, brass-buttoned--could be mistaken for a costume. In his right hand, he held white gloves; at his left hip, a sword and scabbard. He resembled a boy playing dress-up in his father''s clothes.
But Austria lost both the Great War and its empire, and the pomp and traditions to which he had sworn boyhood allegiance were mostly gone. What remained of the great Austrian empire was its tradition of horsemanship, which Podhajsky still believed was the best in the world. Now was his chance to prove it with the eyes of the world upon him. Nero''s turnout was impeccable, each of his braids carefully wrapped in snow-white adhesive tape, setting off the arched carriage of his neck. Podhajsky looked resplendent in the olive uniform of the Austrian Republic. The failed racehorse and his reject rider were preparing to compete in one of the most complex and demanding sports. Of all equestrian sports, dressage requires the most discipline. Descended from intricate military maneuvers developed in ancient times, dressage asks horse and rider to execute a series of carefully prescribed movements.
Just as ballroom dancing and pair skating command partners to work together seamlessly, in the sport of dressage, the rider performs an intricate pas de deux with his partner--a twelve-hundred-pound four-footed beast. Great dressage demands more than skill; it engages a rider''s inner wisdom and his ability to communicate with a mount in the silent language of horsemanship. The arena was laid out with geometrical precision on the clipped lawn of May Field. Large pots of flowers were set up at intervals around the perimeter, adding vibrant splashes of color. In the distance, the impressive hulk of Olympia Stadium filled the horizon, festooned with the flags of many nations. Evenly spaced scarlet Nazi swastika banners stained its perimeter. Inside, a hundred thousand seats were filled to capacity for the track and field events. The crowd assembled to watch the dressage competition, though a quarter that size, was no less fervent.
Men in white fedoras and women in colorful summer dresses speckled the field''s stands like rainbow sprinkles on ice cream. Podhajsky had committed to memory the complex series of movements that he would need to execute perfectly in the seventeen minutes allotted to him. If his horse stepped out of the low barriers that marked the boundaries of the twenty-by-sixty-meter ring, he would be eliminated. Surrounding the arena were points marked by letters of the alphabet: If the program specified that a movement be completed as he passed that mark, the horse needed to begin or end the movement just as the rider''s boot passed the marker. In the sport of dressage, the rider spends years teaching a horse to perform movements on command that come naturally to horses in the wild. The horse has four ordinary paces: walk, trot, canter, and gallop, each with a different cadence. But in each of these paces, a wild horse will perform the gaits with a variety of nuances. For example, when a horse trots, it moves its legs in diagonal pairs with a two-beat cadence.
A wild stallion, showing off, sometimes elevates the simple trot to an art form--he coils his powerful haunches underneath him, slows down the tempo, and elevates each step, transforming the workaday gait into a balletic art. These exaggerated movements are innate in certain circumstances, but to coax a horse to perform them on command takes the utmost tact, sympathy, and meticulous training from a rider. In an advanced dressage test, a rider may ask a horse to perform a pirouette, whereby the horse''s hindquarters remain almost in place while his forelegs canter a full circle around them, or a half-pass, where a horse moves both forward and sideways, his body slightly bent around his rider''s leg, his legs crossing each other. Each of these movements has been inculcated slowly, painstakingly, in a step-by-step process that takes years to complete. As he awaited his turn, Podhajsky hoped that his own long years of practice would pay off. His thoughts turned inward as he listened to the voice of his instructor at the Spanish Riding School, the man who had taught him to tap into riding''s most ancient traditions. Every competitor on May Field had trained hard to be here. Everyone hoped to win an Olympic medal.
But Podhajsky had more at stake than the desire to win a prize: He believed that the deep communion between rider and horse was something exalted. In an indifferent and sometimes cruel world, he wanted to embody what his years of patient training stood for--discipline, tradition, perfection for its own sake, passion given form. Winning a medal might be the final outcome of this endeavor, but for Podhajsky, the endeavor itself mattered most. Podhajsky lifted his eyes to look over risers jammed with spectators. So strange that such a large crowd was gathered here to watch a spectacle that in some ways was so private. As Podhajsky himself later commented, "Excited applause does not help in the least; what is needed is perfect sympathy and harmony with one''s partner." Practicing this most delicate art, Podhajsky had learned to turn himself into an animal psychologist; he knew that success belonged to those riders who were able to ally themselves with their mounts. Today Podhajsky would ride for Austria, but more than anything, he would seek to enter into an almost mystical state of union with his horse.
As Podhajsky waited his turn to enter the arena, he watched the other competitors with a practiced eye. He knew that his stiffest competition came from the Germans, who had a home field advantage. He was certain that he and Nero could compete with the world''s best, though as he looked across the field at the international panel of judges assembled there, he knew that this was not just a competition but also an elaborate game of political chess. One hundred and thirty-three riders from twenty-one countries had gathered to compete in the equestrian events at the summer ''36 Games. Three years earlier, the National Socialist Party had catapulted Hitler into power. Designed to showcase the Nazi Party''s Aryan ideals, the Berlin Olympics w.