ABSTRACT
A perceived ‘new’ Elizabethan era reinterpreted aspects of British history and popular culture in the 1950s and 1960s following the coronation of young and glamorous monarch Elizabeth II. Equestrian Pat Smythe was well placed to benefit from these narratives. In an age of increased politicisation of sport, particularly Cold War politics, competing against larger international rivals was thought to reveal something about the character of the individual and of wider British identity. Unlike many Olympic sports and disciplines, Smythe pitted herself, and her horses, as an individual, directly against male and female competitors. Given equestrianism’s militarised roots as an Olympic sport, she and her horses often appeared to be diminutive adversaries compared with her male co-competitors. Smythe was vivacious; cosmopolitan; multitalented as both a writer and broadcaster; an accomplished horse trainer; pretty good on skis and endlessly well-connected. Only too pleased to be cast as a Renaissance woman, at a time when modernity and nostalgia coalesced, Smythe, was one of the most famous sportswomen of her era, and authored her celebrity as much as allowing the media to report on her life. In all of this, the Olympic Games were an amateur footnote, in an otherwise professional career.
