When it was over, she sat atop Bugsy, her dun-colored, heavily breathing American Paint Horse, sighed and rolled her eyes the way disappointed 14-year-old girls do.
“I didn’t place!” Malia Mangham hissed, mindful not at all that she had won two ribbons barely two hours before, and that virtually every person she had just competed against Tuesday morning likely had entered the world on a saddle.
I suppose when you are a city girl from south Denver, who only six years ago learned to ride in the shadows of the City Jail on a horse that is not yours, on money your mother scraped and saved to make it happen, failure to be the best is not an option.
“She will be OK,” her mother, Kim Downing, 53, said, standing near the Events Center rail at the National Western Stock Show & Rodeo and watching her daughter trot off. “She knows she is so fortunate, that city kids so rarely have the opportunity not only to ride, but to be in this arena. Most of these kids were born to this.”
It began when Malia was in second grade and spotted a flier on a friend’s refrigerator. The flier described a horsemanship education program at the Urban Farm at Stapleton, which provides agricultural and environmental education to about 3,000 urban kids annually.
If she was serious, Kim Downing remembers telling Malia, she would sign her up for the 12-week “very young riders” program.
“I was so scared, so amazingly scared,” Malia remembers. “That first ride was terrifying.”
She stuck with it, though that first class was about more than just riding a horse. It was cleaning horses and their stalls, checking for illness, learning how to saddle and bridle the horses.
“I practiced and practiced because I loved it,” she said. Finally, two years ago, she competed in her first show at the Adams County Fair. She has since won, she said, three first-place ribbons.
Her trainer farm decided she was accomplished enough to compete at the National Western this year.
Malia spent three months riding and training at the Urban Farm, six days a week.
“My horse,” she said, “was kind of really fat when we started, but in those months, I got him in shape. I’m so proud of him, what we did today.”
Kim Downing leases Bugsy from the Urban Farm, a decision she made after witnessing the connection between the horse and her daughter, which she calls “true love.”
“If it snows and she can’t ride, she will muck his stall and just sit with him. The people at the farm two years ago told her they could get her a better horse, but Malia was firm, she wanted that horse,” she said.
The girl has changed out of the jodhpurs, jacket, boots and helmet she wore while winning the two ribbons in the English riding section of her class, and now stalks around Bugsy in tasseled riding pants, a turquoise and sequined shirt and black cowboy hat for the Western portion. She pats him gently before climbing aboard.
Kim Downing says nothing from the rail about a half hour later as she watches her grim-faced daughter trot past on Bugsy.
“It’s not about the ribbon,” she finally says. “It really is about the hours and hours she trained, and feeling good about being here, about realizing her lifelong dream of getting here. She will be fine.”
Bill Johnson writes Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Reach him at 303-954-2763 or wjohnson@denverpost.com.
