Lars Petrus Ragnar Kastenman, né Kahlsson (15 August 1924 – 10 June 2013)[1] was a Swedish Army officer and equestrian who won an individual gold medal in eventing at the 1956 Summer Olympics in Stockholm.

[2] Kastenman was born on 15 August 1924 in the cottage named Draget, close to Nynäs Castle in Bälinge socken, Södermanland, Sweden, the son of Johan Kahlsson and his wife Elin (née Johansson).

[3][4] His father was a tailor who fell out of a window and was forced to amputate both legs and who now lived out his days as a merchant; he ran a business in his own cottage.

As a child, Kastenman used to sit and look out the kitchen window at how the horsemen drove with timber on the ice of Rundbosjön before they came into the cottage to drink coffee.

Kastenman had to keep the estate owner's dogs going for weeks, so they were properly trained when the weekend guests came out to the castle and wanted to hunt.

At the age of thirteen, he started working as a stable boy on farms in Södermanland, and a few years later he was a hunting student at Marcus Wallenberg Sr.'s Mörkö.

There were those who resented the successes, and now that Illuster had developed so well, there were senior officers who thought it ridiculous that a simple sergeant should have such a good horse.

Despite this, the two managed to stay close to each other until 1956, when the Olympics took place in Melbourne but where the games' equestrian competitions, due to quarantine regulations, were held in Stockholm.