Pat Smythe

Olympic medal record
Equestrian
Representing  United Kingdom
	1956 Stockholm	Jumping team

Patricia Rosemary Smythe (22 November 1928 – 27 February 1996), most commonly known as Pat Smythe, was one of Britain's premier female showjumpers. She married after the Summer Olympics in 1960 to childhood friend Sam Koechlin and became Patricia Koechlin-Smythe. This meant a move to Switzerland (as he was Swiss) and it was there that many of her books, including several pony books for children, were written. Sam died in 1986 and Pat moved back to the Cotswolds.

Pat's death came due to heart disease when she was 67. She was also the subject of a commemorative plate.

Pat Smythe was the last of three children, the other two being Dicky and Ronald Smythe. Sadly, Dicky died from pneumonia at the age of 4. Her parents were Eric Hamilton Smythe and Frances Monica Curtoys, who were born in the early 1900s. She lived in London, on the outskirts of Richmond Park. Later she was a boarder at Talbot Heath School in Bournemouth.

Pat nearly died when she was nearly 5 from diphtheria. Although she recovered fully, it meant that she had to learn to walk again. Hardship and suffering were to feature predominantly throughout her professional and personal life. Her father died when she was in her late teens, and her mother when she was 23.

World War II brought times of awkward separation for the family. As well as the usual wartime activity of evacuation and rationing, in early 1940 her father was sent to Biskra in Algeria in search of a respite from his arthritis. Her mother remained in London working for the Red Cross.

During her father's return from North Africa via France, her mother set out to find him. She eventually found him in the town of Aix-les-Bains. Together they managed to get out of France, under enemy fire, on the very last boat leaving Bordeaux just before the Germans occupied the city and the majority of the rest of France.

Pat herself was sent to the Cotswolds (Ferne) for her safety, along with her pony, Pixie. Her brother had been evacuated to Newquay in Devon, where his school had relocated.

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