As 14-year-old Erika Mahlen lay on the ground after falling off while riding bareback, she had no idea that her accident would leave her bedridden for more than a month and out of the saddle for four months.

With a fractured tibia and her left femur shattered into more than 20 pieces, Mahlen’s road to recovery was frustratingly long and painful. Doctors struggled to piece her leg back together with operations that included putting a metal rod down her femur, two screws in her left knee and another two in her hip. But through it all, Mahlen remained confident she would one day ride again.

“To me, the thought of never riding again was just not acceptable,” she insisted. “I remember thinking to myself that even if I never showed competitively again that I would, no matter what, get back in the saddle again.”

And after multiple surgeries, months of physical therapy and a lot of gritting her teeth, she did. Pride, perseverance and positive thinking during her first show back following the accident helped Mahlen earn the title of high-point rider aboard Jaeger, the horse that had bucked her off.

“By the end of the show that day I was so stiff and sore my mother had to literally heave me into the saddle. In fact, I remember bleeding through my breeches, but it was the greatest feeling in the world to be back on a horse again,” she said.

A little more than eight years later, Mahlen’s spill continues to trouble her. “I have no muscles covering the top of my hip, so the left side is inherently stiffer and weaker,” she de-scribed with a tinge of frustration. “The stiffness in that area makes it difficult to stay relaxed and loose, so it’s really almost a disability that I have to overcome every time I get in the tack.”


A New Outlook
Like so many people caught in the web that horses manage to weave, the struggle to overcome adversity is not just an obstacle, but also a goal.

At the 2005 North Ameri-can Young Riders Champion-ships held in Lexington, Va., Mahlen achieved a dream she’d been chasing when she finished in the top 20.

During her last two years of eligibility, Mahlen focused all of her time and energy on accomplishing the goal she’d dreamed about since she was 12. With the help of trainer Kelly Underhill, Mahlen discovered that in order to attain her dream, she would have to go back to the basics.

“I tend to over-think everything and put a lot of pressure on myself, which used to make showing difficult. I had lost sight of what dressage was supposed to feel like, and Kelly showed me how to enjoy dressage again and make my horse have fun as well,” said Mahlen.

“Mahlen has a lot of heart and loves the horses and riding,” said Underhill, who knew her student long before she started training her. “Her passion for the sport and the animals was not in question, but she was discouraged with her performance, so we had to focus on the basics.”

As part of Underhill’s training regimen, Mahlen spent a full month taking lessons on the end of a longe line in order to relearn how to sit and use her aids properly.

“It took a lot of work, and Erika’s still learning how to stay light and allowing the movements to come instead of forcing them,” explained Underhill. “We’ve worked on small corrections in order to improve carriage and lightness, which the longe line work helped because she was able to rediscover her body and seat.”

When the first horse show rolled around after months of intensive training with Under-hill, Mahlen focused on her mental preparation–centering herself, visualizing the test and staying positive, relaxed, and calm.

By the summer of 2004, all of the grueling work and persistent practice helped Mahlen earn her U.S. Dressage Federation silver medal during a show at the Lamplight Eques-trian Center (Ill.).

“I had been struggling to break 60 percent in my Prix St. Georges tests, and I remember one of the judges, Axel Steiner, gave me a 57 percent earlier in the week,” said Mahlen. “As the week progressed, I saw my scores go up, and I knew that in front of Steiner I must really have been improving or else he wouldn’t have increased my scores. By the end of that show, I had done it–I had broken 60 percent and achieved that silver medal!”

With her scores improving and her newly discovered laissez-faire mentality, the young woman, who had for years fought pain and horse show nerves, suddenly started to feel that the stars she’d been reaching for were within her grasp.

In her last year as a young rider Mahlen only had 21�2 months, as a result of Minne-sota’s short show season, to qualify for the coveted NAYRC. To help her parents with the expense, she braided horses, worked at the barn on Sundays and held fundraising events.

Just when things were looking up, Mahlen’s horse, a 17.1-hand chestnut gelding, Angelo, stepped on a
rock the weekend before the NAYRC and came up three-legged lame.

“He’s very sensitive to pain,” said Mahlen. “I thought we might not be able to show and I was devastated. I spent that entire night soaking his foot in warm Epsom salts.”

Perhaps Angelo knew the importance of the week that lay ahead because the next day, much to Mahlen’s relief, he was 100 percent sound.

Angelo was Mahlen’s one and only ticket to success. As a motivated rider with limited funds, she could never afford the quality of horse necessary to achieve her ambitious goals. Together with her mother, Kathy Mahlen, she would spend hours in the car after school traveling to far-off trainers and stables where she would ride whatever was available to her at the time.


Blue Light Specials
With a lot of hope and little bit of luck, Mahlen had found her “blue light special,” as she loving refers to Angelo, after a year of searching. Nothing had turned up until she saw an ad on the Internet.

Recalled Mahlen, “I have a soft spot for chestnuts, and he looked like what I was searching for–safe, solid, sound, not too hot and able to do the movements.

“I knew as soon as I walked into the barn that he was ‘the one’ because of his personality–he possesses the attributes of both a gentleman and a pocket pony, and when I got on him, we clicked right away.”

Even though Mahlen felt that she had discovered her dream horse, she knew she needed dedication and practice. So, she took a semester off from the University of Wisconsin at River Falls to compete at the Winter Equestrian Festival in Wellington, Fla.

In order to fund the undertaking, Mahlen stabled off grounds and took care of Angelo herself, getting up early to feed and muck out before setting off to her temporary job as a veterinarian’s assistant technician.

“All the hard work was definitely worth it, and I would say that spending those few months in Florida was one of the top experiences of my life. I got to ride a lot and also meet big-time riders like Robert Dover and Tuny Page, whom I may not have had the opportunity to see in Minnesota,” said Mahlen with a hint of sarcasm.

Her time in Florida taught Mahlen a great deal about what she was capable of, which motivated her to push even harder to reach her goals.

When she walked into the ring for the first time at NAYRC, Mahlen remembered all the hard work and long days that helped put her in a situation to earn that top-20 finish. Now it was up to her and Angelo to finish what they started. As she tuned out the familiar faces in the stands and the music playing softly over the PA system, Mahlen picked up a trot and began the test she had gone over again and again and again in her head.

Pulling Angelo up to a halt, Mahlen finally took a deep breath, dropped the reins and smiled. At this point, whether or not she made it to the next round seemed irrelevant.

“I froze a little when I got in the ring because I was nervous showing among so many nice horses and talented riders,” said Mahlen with a sigh. “But the whole Young Rider experience and the fact that I was part of it, finally in my last year, was more than what I could ask for.

“I had never shown in front of any of the judges before, so I was pleased with my 17th-placed finish since probably no one had ever heard of me before.”

Mahlen was not the only one thrilled with the performance.

“There was a lot of emotion going into Young Riders because of Angelo coming up lame the week before. I was so happy for her because she was able to perform at a level that she’d dreamed of and was finally able to showcase her abilities. Watching Erika ride her test as well as she did was one of the highlights of my career as a trainer,” said Underhill.

Now officially an amateur, Mahlen is already focused on new goals and dreams. While she dreams of the Olympic Games, she would be content to be a “professional amateur” like one of her role models, Tammy Hoag.

Said Mahlen, “It would be great to break into the international scene and compete all over the world, but I also will be content just to be a good rider with happy, well-trained horses. Hopefully, I’ll be able to make it to Grand Prix and earn my gold medal one day, and it would be great if I can get a young horse and train it to that level myself.”


Elizabeth Shoudy