The Mystery of the Missing Mare
One day in 1874 in Kisbér, a town near Budapest, a mare went missing. The animal lived with about fifty other horses on a beautiful estate, and she was the skinniest and most ungainly of the lot. After searching the area for a while, her breeder managed to find her at a gypsy encampment, but before taking her back home, he couldn’t resist asking the gypsies why on earth they had stolen that rather plain-looking mare instead of one of the much more handsome ones. An elderly gypsy woman answered, looking him deep in the eyes: “The other horses may be more beautiful, but this one is the best of the bunch. She’s a special mare—you’ll see, she’ll become a champion.”
Kincsem: The Champion Thoroughbred
Never was a prophecy more spot-on: that mare was none other than the famous Kincsem (whose name means “my treasure”), the greatest galloping thoroughbred of all time who, starting in 1876, would go on to win all fifty-four races she ever competed in.
The Friendship Between the Mare and the Cat
She was a star and behaved like one, diva tantrums included. Kincsem had an inseparable friend, a black-and-white cat named Csalogány (Nightingale), without whom she wouldn’t go anywhere. Race or no race, if the cat wasn’t there, they weren’t going. For his part, Csalogány didn’t let Kincsem’s commitments put a dent in his feline independence, and if he felt like taking a stroll through the alleys or across the rooftops of a new city, he certainly didn’t ask permission. There was much talk about that time the little rascal wandered onto a boat in Boulogne and the stable hands had to comb through the harbor inch by inch to find him.
A Thoroughbred with a Refined Palate
As if her obsession with the cat wasn’t enough, Kincsem also gave her caretakers headaches with another quirk: she would only drink water that met her approval, and since she couldn’t exactly explain what made water acceptable in her book, the task of quenching her thirst often became quite the ordeal. Once, before a race in Baden-Baden, she didn’t drink for an entire day, and only a few minutes before the race did they manage to find a spring whose water was finally deemed drinkable by the four-legged superstar.
