In 2022, Donna Cheek was honored with an Ethos Award, presented to Black pioneers in the equestrian world. While the Ethos Awards ceremony held at the Washington International Horse Show brought the honorees’ stories to a broad audience, those honorees had careers that have been inspiring young riders, particularly Black riders, across disciplines and through decades.
Cheek was inducted into the National Women’s Sports Hall of Fame in 1987 and received the Trailblazer Courage Award from the Women’s Sports Museum in 2017. As with many a young girl who loves horses, Cheek’s early dreams had quickly made the leap from wanting to learn to ride to aiming to ride in the Olympics. As a teenager in the early 
1980s, Cheek was helped along in those aspirations by a supportive family and a community of Black business and cultural leaders that led to her participation at the 1982 American Junior Show Jumping Championship in Mexico City, where she became the first Black rider on a U.S. team to compete in an international event.
Although Cheek recounted that she had been “obsessed with horses” and focused on “riding to the highest level” she could, she had also been interested in making a mark in the broader world. Featured among 12 Black athletes in a 1983 publication called “Going for the Gold” aimed at schoolkids, then-19-year-old Cheek said, “I want my life to be an example for young Black women who are told they can’t do something.”
Although fulfilling her Olympic dream remained out of her reach, Cheek’s life and career with horses succeeded in widening the perspective of thousands of children with their own dreams and keeping her true to her real passion. “It’s been a joy and privilege to better the life of horses that came through my barn or that I encountered in my career,” she said.
Donna Cheek was not from a horsey family. Her parents were from Harlem, N.Y., and her father’s career took them to California, where he was a professor of social psychology. She started taking lessons at age seven from Mary O’Rourke in the Claremont area when her dad was president of the Claremont Colleges, and she rode in her first horse show when she was eight. She fondly remembers winning a class on Toby, a master school horse blind in one eye. “I was hooked,” she said. “Well, I had been hooked on horses already, but now I was hooked on competing.”
When her father began teaching at California Polytechnic in San Luis Obispo, the family moved to a 50-acre property in Atascadero. One of Cheek’s four older brothers built the family’s 10-stall barn for his senior project as an architecture student at Cal Poly. By this time, Cheek was riding with Sally Overby and had her own horse, Beau Banter. When Overby moved her program to the Cheek family’s barn and Beau came home, Cheek learned to take full care of the barn and the horses in it.
Her whole family was behind her devotion to horses and sought out ways to
make the finances work. Cheek’s mother soon learned to drive a trailer and would load Beau and pick Cheek up from high school to ship for lessons with Bruce Brown when Overby encouraged her to branch out in her training. Long before the current trend of riders spending hours training off the horse, Cheek was running four miles a day with her dad — a runner who competed in Masters track events — and weight training a few days a week. “I wanted to be ready to ride any horse I might get a chance to catch ride. I’m petite, so I worked out to gain strength. Those practices keep me fit even today," she said.
With just one horse of her own, and the unexpected death of Beau in 1978, Cheek made the most of any opportunity to ride other horses. “I could happily spend all day in the barn grooming and learning about how to relate to horses. It didn’t matter who I was grooming them for or what, I just loved horses,” Cheek said. As a result, she was often tapped to ride when horses needed work. “I would catch ride anything and everything. I was always trying to sit on different horses," she said.
" Most of them had never seen a hunter/jumper rider, let alone a black one"
"I didn’t get a chance to show them, but I was just happy spending time in the saddle. Somehow my parents then managed to buy a hunter named Aces Up,” she recalled. “He was a bit of a finesse ride but was also solid as my equitation horse.” Cheek started showing at A shows locally and farther afield in California. She left high school for an independent study program and learned to drive the trailer herself to ship in to train with Lois Langer at Pacific Coast Equestrian Center.
“I qualified for medal finals but didn’t have the money to travel East to the finals. I didn’t fret about it, though,” Cheek said. “I was proud of qualifying. One year I won the F. B. Hart Perpetual Trophy in Sacramento. That class required that we switch horses, and all my catch riding made it easy for me. The hunters had given me a great foundation, but I didn’t like the politics of the judging,” she explained. “Sometimes I would have a great trip and not be pinned and other times I’d win when I didn’t think I deserved it. Some of it was typical hunters, but sometimes it did feel like prejudice. I was kind of hard to miss as the only Black rider, but sometimes the judges treated me as invisible. I wanted to switch to jumpers.”
Cheek does not dwell on the prejudice she faced in the hunter/jumper world, but there were a few encounters she related that sum up the effects of racism on her experience and hopes for greater success at the time. She had been invited to swim at the home of another rider at her barn. On Cheek’s arrival, her friend’s mother said to her daughter, “You know how I feel about these people.” Although her friend stood up to her mother, Cheek “felt the hostility” and left. “I had never dealt with racism to my face before then, though when you’re Black, you just know it’s there. It was definitely humbling.”
As she became more successful on the show circuit, Cheek's father explored the possibility of training with nationally-known trainers. One acknowledged Cheek’s talent but told her father that the board of directors at the club where he stabled “made it clear that Jews and 
Blacks were not welcome.”
However, the trainers Cheek did work with were encouraging. “They were so supportive of my talent,” she said. “I didn’t know I had talent. I believe my trainers saw it. I knew I had passion and love for these horses.”
In Scott King, she found a jumper trainer who was equally supportive inside and outside of the ring. “Scott and my dad became really good friends,” Cheek said. “They were both from back east and scrappy. Scott and my dad would think outside of the box to find horses and promote my career.” Cheek sold Aces Up, and King found jumpers for her to show.
While some in the horse show world weren’t supportive, her parents found a community of people who were. Their daughter’s teenage ambitions in the early 1980s intersected with a vibrant California Black community transforming business, social, and cultural landscapes. With connections to Black entrepreneurs, public relations executives, and players in the entertainment industry, her parents tapped into a whirlwind of support for young Black women making inroads into all kinds of careers. With the excitement of the 1984 Olympics coming to Los Angeles, sports were in sharp focus.
“I was focused on riding and I was lucky that my mom and Pat Tobin, a Hollywood PR agent, worked hard to promote me," Cheek said. "My mom set up a nonprofit, Black Equestrian Sports Talent, and Pat arranged fundraisers and public appearances. My job was to show up when and where I was told in breeches and boots to talk to people.”
Fundraisers included parties at private homes and events at popular celebrity nightclubs. Cheek was featured in Jet, Ebony, and Essence magazines. “At that time, those magazines appeared on living room tables in just about every Black home and hair salon; these were the days long before social media," Cheek explained. Black industry and sports leaders were invested in helping the next generation of aspiring Black athletes and entrepreneurs. Cheek’s supporters included actor Diahann Carroll, Motown’s Quincy Jones, world champion boxer Muhammad Ali (whose wife Veronica was a rider), and real-estate mogul Eula McClaney.
The efforts of King and Cheek’s parents soon came together. When they heard that the 1982 American Junior Show Jumping Championship, usually held in South America, was to be held in Mexico City, they decided it could be a good opportunity for Cheek and a team of California riders to gain international experience. They petitioned the U.S. Equestrian Team, which at the time had authority over Americans competing internationally, for permission to send a team. King was named by the USET to select and lead the team as chef d’equipe. He chose the riders, handled the logistics, and trailered the horses to Mexico City. The members of the team had to find the means to cover their costs; the USET had sanctioned the team’s participation but did not provide any funds. A sponsor from her parents’ network stepped up to purchase and fund the care for a horse King found for Cheek.
“The people at the championship took really good care of us,” Cheek recalled. “They’d never had a U.S. team, and they made a big deal about us. It was so unusual.” Cheek finished fourth individually, with just one rail in the jump-off.
The trip to Mexico was “a proud moment,” Cheek remembered, although it didn’t quite turn into the springboard she, King, and her parents had hoped. The team did not make the podium, so this pioneering effort in the international arena didn’t receive much attention in the equestrian press. P.R. agent Tobin, however, arranged for Cheek’s story to be featured on NBC’s “Special Treat” daytime television series (modeled on ABC’s “Afterschool Special”). Aimed at inspiring young viewers, “One More Hurdle: The Donna Cheek Story” focused on Cheek’s resilience and determination to pursue her dream of riding in the Olympics. Cheek was cast to play herself, riding her horse from the championship. The television show included the highs and lows of horse ownership, and touched on the racism she faced as the only Black competitor at horse shows. Produced by Fernfield Productions and directed by Neema Barnette, herself a pioneering Black director,
“One More Hurdle” aired in April 1984. It won an NAACP Image award.
Not long after, Cheek “retired” from competition and focused on completing her communications degree at Cal Poly. Looking back, she said, “I retired a lot in the course of my career, but I never thought ‘I’ll never ride again.’ It was just really frustrating, so I looked into doing something else. Then, the next thing that happened, I got the call about the Bill Pickett Invitational Rodeo.” The Bill Pickett Invitational Rodeo was founded in 1984 to highlight the historical and modern-day skills of Black cowboys.
Coors was the sponsor and developed an “Outstanding Talent Family” to act as ambassadors, inviting Cheek to give jumping demonstrations at each of the rodeos. “At that time,” she said, “I didn’t have a horse, so I was like, ‘Shoot, I’m just going to catch ride in any city they want me to. I can ride anything.’ I could ride and jump and have fun. I could travel. That was my feeling.”
The BPIR circuit included 10 to 15 cities across the country, and in each city, Cheek had to field the horses suitable for her demonstration rides. “I would arrive on Monday and go to the library, copy down the hunter/jumper stables from the Yellow Pages, go back to the hotel and call them.” She’d visit the barns and try out likely candidates. “It was challenging. I’d go into a city and never know what kind of horse I’d be sitting on,” Cheek recalled. “And the people had no idea I was Black until I showed up to try the horses. It was so interesting — I would get such positive feedback since they had no idea that someone like me could ride so well. I went back to some of the same people each year. I had a lot of great experiences.”
Cheek’s job in each city included promoting the rodeo and the Coors brand on radio, television, and in the newspapers, with occasional visits to schools and children’s hospitals. Cheek noted, “Those of us in the Outstanding Talent Family had posters, brochures, and ‘hero cards’ with our pictures and bios to give out. Coors would set up the interviews and send a rep to pick me up and take me to my appearances .... it was so much fun. We would promote the rodeo, yet tell our own stories, wanting to get the kids’ attention. We’d talk about the character and the approach you have to have to succeed at anything that’s your passion. And that was our message. The message was about finding that passion and pursuing it. That’s when success happens.”
For her performances, Cheek said,“I would always ride to classical music to give a totally different presentation than the rest of the rodeo. The packed audiences were predominantly people of color, and most of them had never seen a hunter/jumper rider, let alone a Black one. Once I finished riding, I would go into the stands and sign autographs for hours. These people were so fascinated and in awe that a person that looked like them was doing something so different. I really felt validated and appreciated when I did the rodeo.”
When the sponsorships for the rodeo special performances ended in the early 1990s, Cheek went back to hunter/jumper jobs, occasionally showing for other people, but as she explained, “Things didn’t pan out well. I just didn’t have access to a chance that led to being able to compete at the level that I desired. With these other opportunities, though, I was having fun, and I was satisfied in my need to ride. I didn’t really need to compete again because I was fulfilled in a way that competing couldn’t compete with.”
" It's been a joy and privilege to better the life of horses that came through my barn"
Eventually, she started training on her own and then moved into consignment sales. Her business focused on finding new jobs for horses who had been outgrown or were stepping down. Cheek focused on working with the horses to figure out the best new role for them. “I wanted to sell the horses into a really happy situation that suited where that horse was at the moment,” she said. All kinds of horses came to her on consignment. She’d reassess whether continuing to be a hunter or dressage horse was the right job for a particular horse. After all her experience with catch riding, she had learned to really listen to horses. She said, “A horse can tell me what makes them happy. I would just approach them with a clean slate, see what they were good at, see what they were happy with, and then I would market and sell them that way. Consequently, people were happy with the horse they bought.”
These days, Cheek’s still fit and maybe not yet completely retired. “I’m an amateur now, and being able to focus on just one horse and compete again is always in the back of my mind. I still love horses," she said, and like them, “I’ve really learned just to live in the moment.”