BOOK EXCERPT
CHASING DREAMS
The True Story of the Youngest Female Tevis Cup Champion BY SANOMA BLAKELEY Reprinted with permission from the author
At seven years old, I competed in my first 25-mile race. I proudly brought my ribbon to school the next day for show and tell. I owned the title of “The Horse-Crazy Girl” in my class. 84
THE PLAID HORSE
WHEN I WAS SEVEN, I got my first
horse that I didn’t have to share with Barrak or my mom. Midnite was the best horse I could have asked for. We were both seven years old when our timelines intertwined. We depended on each other, and I was just as important to Midnite as she was to me. My parents had bought Midnite for a very low price and were training her. In her sales ad, the previous owner had written: “NOT A KID’S HORSE.” Indeed, Midnite was extremely stubborn and had a strong mind of her own. My parents determined that her behavior issues stemmed from her anxiety and insecurity. However, as soon as they put me on her, she was a completely different horse. She melted like butter and was as soft and sweet as a horse could be. For me and Barrak, our favorite playmates were our two horses. I had my Midnite, and he had his Boogsy, and we did just about everything with them. On the weekends, we would wake up early, dress up like cowboys, and sneak out the window in the guest bedroom so the front door would remain locked and our parents would think we were asleep. In our second-hand cowboy hats and boots, we would practice mounting our horses like Pa used to do when he was a kid, swinging up bareback from their manes. We learned other ways to get on them unconventionally—leapfrogging from behind, or even getting their heads down, laying across their necks, and hoisting ourselves onto their backs. With my brother and me on their backs, we came up with all sorts of crazy ways to ride them, sitting side saddle or backwards. Then we would stand on our two patient steads and dismount by sliding off their butts. Sitting on our horses bareback and letting them wander around their pen without any tack, we carried around an old rawhide lass rope just to complete our cowboy costumes. We tried throwing the rope off the horses a few times, but my rope-throwing skills were hopeless and I quickly gave up. Barrak and I dreamed of living on the range. We would sit in our forts after riding bareback all afternoon and make plans of how we would buy a big ranch and cut our own hair. I was Barrak’s little shadow. Whenever he had an idea, I wanted to do it, too. He loved his Boogsy
December 2023/January 2024
and was always suggesting fun things we could do with our horses besides just riding down the trail. On lazy summer days, we would occasionally try our hand at jousting with PVC pipes. Barrak and I set up jousting lanes in the horses’ paddock, so they had to run past each other without veering to the side. Unfortunately, Boogsy was the dominant horse, and when Midnite and I got too close, he would put his ears back and chase her away. When it got too hot outside, we would take our two trusty steeds to the neighbor’s pond and swim with them. Poor Midnite and Boogsy had to put up with everything: jumping, swimming, jousting, and playing cowboy. THAT SAME YE AR , at seven years old, I
competed in my first 25-mile race. I proudly brought my ribbon to school the next day for show and tell. I owned the title of “The Horse-Crazy Girl” in my class. Throughout school, whenever anyone said the word “horse,” I was the girl all heads turned to. Going to school in a small community, I knew my classmates well; it was the same 30 kids from kindergarten through eighth grade. I was always a little distant from my classmates, and although I got along well with everyone, my best friends were Barrak and my horse, Midnite. Several months after completing that 25-mile race, Midnite and I were training for our first 50-miler. The race we picked would be in Nevada in April 2009. To get Midnite and myself ready for the race, my parents would often pick up my brother and I from school with the horse trailer, and we would head straight to the Henderson Flats trailhead to condition our horses. Henderson Flats became my second home. From the trailhead, there are endless miles of trails for hill work, flat work, and speedwork. In preparation for the early spring race, we trained during the winter. I would often finish the last few miles of our ride in the dark when the days were short. On one of those after-school rides, we had planned to train to the top of Gray Butte, which is about 5,100 feet in elevation. Riding to the top gave us a solid 2,000-foot climb from the Henderson Flats trailhead. My parents planned that ride in correspondence to a full moon, since the 15-mile ride would take several hours and we would not be able to get it done in the limited daylight. A few days before our planned ride to Gray Butte, we received a heavy snowfall.
