When a horse with such an extensive and successful show career is pegged with the nicknames “Gangster Rick” and “Tricky Ricki”, there is bound to be a unique personality behind it all.

Mr Magnolia Zip (Ricki), bred by Stephen Mullins of Clinton, Tennessee, was given the nickname “Gangster Rick” by trainer, Mitch Leckey, of Richmond, Indiana, because he was such a “smooth” horse, always putting on a good show, but you never knew exactly what you were going to get with him.

Throughout Ricki’s show career between 1994 and 2007, the 1991 bay gelding sired by Zippo Pine Bar and out of Miss Magnolia Bee, accumulated 1,200 AQHA performance points and generated over $18,700 in AQHA Incentive Fund earnings, almost $15,000 in AQHA World Show earnings and over $17,300 in NSBA earnings.

“A lot of horses are tagged great because of a rare color or appearance,” says Cleve Wells, Burleson, Texas, one of Ricki’s early trainers. “Ricki had his own style and original identity. He did not need a unique color to make him stand out. He was just that good,”

Wells won the Junior Western Pleasure at the Quarter Horse Congress aboard Mr Magnolia Zip in 1996 and says the gelding’s long, pretty neck was a huge asset when it was completely in place.

“He was not an easy horse to put together,” Wells recalls. “You had to make sure everything was just right, but when it was all there, he was a World Champion horse.”

In 1999, Leckey began searching for a special horse that would be capable of taking his young contender, Montgomery Lee (Petty) Schlappi, to the top in the competitive AQHA Western Pleasure classes. Mr. Magnolia Zip quickly moved to the top of the list.

“Mitch was in love with Ricki,” says Schlappi, who now lives outside Nashville, Tennessee, with her husband, country music artist Randy Montana, and their two children. “He thought that I would match up perfectly with him. Well, Mitch was totally right! After my first ride with Ricki, I knew he was the one. He instantly stole my heart.”

The Pettys purchased Mr Magnolia Zip from the Thompson family during the 1999 Quarter Horse Congress. Allison Thompson had been showing him in youth events with a lot of success. They were 1997 AQHYA Reserve World Champions in Western Pleasure and earned over 190 Western Pleasure points. Her mother, Susan, logged another 100 Amateur Western Pleasure points on the bay gelding.

In the show pen, Ricki was well known for his long, striking neck, incredible movement and overall magnetism.

“He was a phenomenal pleasure horse. He had a really exotic look and tons of ring presence,” Leckey says.

When it came time to sell Ricki, Schlappi says, “I interviewed everyone that was interested in buying him. I was not going to sell him to just anyone. Then Dennis Pathroff came along and he seemed to be the kind of person that would be very understanding of the type of horse that Ricki was. I knew that with the Pathroff family Ricki would be going from one loving home to another.”

After the Petty family sold Ricki to the Pathroff family in 2006, Dennis partnered with Ricki in tackling the gelding’s last couple of years in the show pen. The team totaled 78 points together.

Then in 2008, the Pathroff family donated Mr Magnolia Zip to become a therapeutic riding horse at the Victory Junction Camp in Randleman, North Carolina. The camp, established by the Petty Family and actor Paul Newman, is open all year round for children with serious illnesses.

The Petty family founded the camp in honor of their son Adam, who was killed in a tragic racing accident in 2000 at the age of 19, while he was practicing for the Busch 200.

These days, Ricki is enjoying retirement at the Victory Junction Camp where the children walk him around, brush him, and give him lots of love and attention.

“The kids adore him,” Schlappi says. “They think it is so cool that he is a World Champion. After I won the Youth World with Ricki, there was a picture of us placed on the Wheaties cereal box. That picture hangs on his stall. All of the kids think he is really famous because of it.”.

Ricki may not have been the simplest horse to form a bond with while on his back, but he has proven to be a trustworthy soul.

“He was always very well behaved on the ground,” Leckey says. “When my son was young, he would hang all over Ricki’s legs. He was a very kind horse. You never had to worry about him hurting anyone.”

After all of these years, Ricki continues to remain in the hearts of his past riders.

“He was and still is the best horse that I have ever known. It was truly an honor having the privilege to partner with such a great horse,” Schlappi says.

Even though he was known for his exceptional talents as a show horse, Ricki’s riders of the past share that he certainly was not the type of horse that anyone could just jump on and ride.

Schlappi says the most difficult thing about Ricki was his intelligent mind. She remembers spending a lot of time with Leckey exercising the gelding’s overly active brain.

Wells shares those memories.

“It is important to always have an agenda when you ride a horse that smart,” he says. “With Ricki, you needed to focus on drawing him in, keeping him occupied, and staying ahead of his thought process. Every person that rode Ricki had to learn to actually ride him. He was like a little Albert Einstein. He challenged me to challenge him in a positive way. It was true team work that we had.”

Mr Magnolia Zip’s riders acknowledge that even though he was not an easy horse to ride, when he decided to join your team, he was in it to win it.

In 2001 Schlappi and Ricki were crowned AQHYA World Champions in Western Pleasure. They also won the National Youth Association Team Tournament (NYATT) Western Pleasure at the Congress that same year.

In 2004 Leckey and Mr Magnolia Zip placed in the Top 5 in Senior Western Pleasure at both the Quarter Horse Congress and the AQHA World Show.

“You had to do your homework and put the time in before you took him to a show,” Leckey says. “But if you did, he always came through when the pressure was on. He taught me that you have to work really hard to do well. Ricki was definitely a special horse.”

One of Schlappi’s favorite things about Ricki was the way he expressed himself through his ears.

“I could tell so much by looking at his ears. I vividly remember watching them every time I rode him,” she says.