Lis Hartel

Lis Hartel was one of the best young riders in Denmark when, in 1944, aged 23 and pregnant, she caught polio. The disease paralysed her almost completely. She gave birth to a healthy daughter, then began the slow business of getting her body back, first learning to lift her arms, then to sit up, then to crawl. Her legs below the knee never recovered.

Doctors told her she would not ride again. She had herself lifted onto a horse and fell off repeatedly. Dressage, which rewards invisible control of the horse through seat and legs, seemed the worst possible discipline for someone who could not use her lower legs at all. She adapted her technique, relying on balance and the smallest shifts of weight, and within three years was back in national competition.

Women had never been allowed to ride against men at the Olympics. That changed in 1952, and Hartel, who had to be helped into the saddle and could not walk to the podium unaided, was chosen for Helsinki. Riding her horse Jubilee she won the silver medal. The winner, the Swedish officer Henri Saint Cyr, lifted her onto the podium himself, a moment often described as one of the most moving in Olympic history.

She won silver again four years later. She spent much of her later life raising money for polio patients and helped establish therapeutic riding for disabled people in Denmark.