Taking the reins on a bright future

This area boasts some amazing young people, doing some amazing things, some of them in fields we never even knew existed. Darby Mailhot, a 17-year-old Mulmur resident, is a fine example.
Mailhot is currently ranked seventh in the world in her age group in the sport of reining, a relatively under-the-radar equestrian discipline that can most easily be described as the Western version of dressage.

The best way to see what Mailhot is capable of is to check out a video of one of her competitions online. There are several on Youtube and one down at the bottom of this article. A holdover from cowboy days when riders needed to be agile on their horses while keeping their hands mostly free to tend to other duties, reining is done with just one hand on the reins and features several high-speed precision manoeuvres, spins and sliding stops.

Growing up surrounded by horses – her parents Mike and Dana Mailhot run Club Amarillo, a rehabilitation facility for thoroughbred race horses just outside Terra Nova – Darby first competed in pony clubs at the age of four. She focused on English equestrian riding until she was 11, when by chance she joined her parents on a trip to a Shelburne-area trainer who was going to work on one of the horses in their care. That’s where she first heard about the sport of reining, and before long she was shopping for a cowboy hat and spurs.

“I got hooked fast,” she says now. She spent the first few years competing at quarter horse competitions around Ontario, and in both 2010 and 2011, despite training her horse herself and having no coach, she accumulated enough winnings to rank 11th in the world.

With those results in her pocket, she and her parents decided to up the ante in 2012, trailering down to several prestigious events in the eastern and southern United States, where people have definitely heard of the sport. Competing in Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Michigan, Oklahoma and Kentucky, Mailhot finished the season ranked seventh, with several newspaper articles describing her as one of the sport’s “hot young riders.”

This year will be different for Mailhot, for a couple of reasons. Firstly, she’ll have a coach for the first time, based out of Massachusetts, where she and her gelding Chrome Wonder will likely spend most of the summer. And secondly, she’s graduating from Centre Dufferin District High School in June, and what lies ahead is quite exciting. Over the next several weeks, Darby and her mom will travel to five different American universities, all of whom are interested in offering the young horsewoman a scholarship to study and compete on their campuses. So whether she’s at Delaware State, the University of South Dakota, Texas A&M, the University of Oklahoma or Kansas State, Darby will be riding on a new stage come September.

All in all, quite an accomplishment, although you’ll be hard-pressed to get Darby to admit it.

“I try to stay humble, especially in this sport,” she said. “One day you could be in first, and the next day you could be in last, you always have to remember that.”