Page 81 - SpeedhorseMarch2021

“Every horse lover, when somebody says, ‘Hey, can you show me one of
your horses?’ jumps right to it; that’s music to your ears!”
Getting Involved in Racing
In the middle of his divorce in the early 1980s, Malon’s interest in horses led him to an old cowboy friend. “I always liked horses but knew nothing about them,” Malon says. He asked his friend if he could teach him about them, and of course, the friend agreed. “Every horse lover, when somebody says, ‘Hey, can you show me one of your horses?’ jumps right to it; that’s music to your ears!” Malon says.
Malon went on to buy a yearling and a saddle horse from his friend and learned how to ride.
A year or two later, Malon partnered with another friend on his first racehorse and pro-
ceeded from there.
“We lived in Kennewick and raced at Sun
Downs and then on to Dayton and Walla Walla,” he says, “and as I got more into the racing, we raced in Oregon some and on the Montana circuit — Kalispell, Missoula, Great Falls, and the other little tracks there and up into Canada — the bush tracks in the Northwest.”
After they married, Lola fell into step with Malon’s racing enterprise. “Lola was very supportive of anything Malon wanted to do,” says longtime friend and fellow owner/ breeder Kathy Meneely of Kennewick. “She may not have been out at the track and work- ing with the horses, but she never put any roadblocks in his way. If he wanted a horse or wanted to do something with the horses, she was right there saying, ‘That’s fine,
let’s do it!’”
Lola and Malon Cowgill
Juno Dat Royal Bug winning the Sprint Handicap at Los Alamitos.
Benito Curiel is the owner/trainer of One Runaway Opener, a multiple stakes placed winner.
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Los Alamintos
Ginny Harding Photography