Parker, Colo.—July 27

Mallory Chambers found herself in a place she never thought she’d be Wednesday afternoon at the Colorado Horse Park: riding her horse, Urithmic, around the ring at the Adequan/FEI North American Junior and Young Rider Championships, a gold medal around her neck and a blue cooler draped over “Uri’s” haunches. 

“It’s always been my dream to be here, and I never thought I would be so this is an absolute unbelievable dream that I’m living right now,” Mallory Chambers, 21, said after her four-member Region 1 team captured the gold medal in the FEI Young Rider Team Test. “It’s really surreal; the whole time we were standing on the podium I was like this is not real, somebody pinch me.”

Chambers had good reason to doubt that the NAJYRC dream she was living was reality. Her beginnings in horse sport were far more modest than the glamorous world of sequined shadbellies and white breeches she inhabits nowadays.

“I started riding western when I was 8 years old,” Chambers said. “I bought an Appaloosa when she was 6 months old and I was 8, and I knew nothing.”

Armed with nothing but gumption and her horse-craziness, Chambers set about teaching the filly.

“I trained her myself off of training videos by Clint Anderson, so credit to him,” Chambers said with a laugh. “We took ended up taking her to second level, and then I lost her to colic in 2014 when she was 11.”

The mare’s death was a devastating blow to Chambers, who had started riding as a working student with dressage trainer Heather Mason when she was 12.

“That totally crushed me,” Chambers said. “Heather just threw horses at me to ride, and through that I bought one of her sales horses off of her.”

Unfortunately, 1 1/2 years ago that horse developed lameness issues that kept Chambers temporarily out of the tack. Horseless and hungry for something to ride and compete, she turned to Mason for options.

There was a horse in the barn that might fit the bill for Chamber’s ambitious goals—Uri. The 15-year-old Dutch Warmblood (Jazz—Ivonne II, Zeoliet) was talented—he competed up to the Grand Prix level with Mason, and at the time was hovering on the back burner while Mason was busy working with her other Grand Prix mounts.

Uri was no schoolmaster, though—he had a colorful past. 

“[Mason] gave me one of the craziest horses that she has; he had been abused and beaten horribly,” Chambers explained. “He’s a psycho, and all the credit goes to her, because she took him in and made him rideable.”

Chambers began working with the gelding 1 1/2 years ago and they didn’t click right away.

“It was a little rough; he’s gotten me off a couple times,” Chambers said with a laugh. “But he’s got the biggest heart, it’s just amazing, and he loves the attention. He’s come a long way; we’ve come a long way as a team.”

Chambers and Uri scored 64.47 percent to help their team of Nick Hansen, Lian Wolfe, and Elizabeth Bortuzzo to the team gold medal (Hansen, 21, had the highest individual score of the Young Rider division at 72.26 percent).

Chambers isn’t done setting goals for herself and the bay gelding yet.

“Brentina Cup! That’s next!” Chambers said with a huge grin. “Which is surreal too, that that is our goal.”

Chambers still works for Mason as a working student, and her own personal horse (she free leases Uri) is working at fourth level and Prix St. Georges.

“My horse was also abused and has mental issues, so I guess that’s my specialty,” Chambers said thoughtfully, tilting her head and smiling, team gold medal glinting in the sun from its ribbon around her neck. “I like the crazy ones!” 

See full NAJYRC results.

Make sure to read all the Chronicle’s in-depth coverage of all disciplines at the North American Junior and Young Rider Championships in the Aug. 15 issue of The Chronicle of the Horse, which is also the USHJA International Hunter Derby Championships Preview issue.