DOWNHILL RACER : Donovan Is Riding to the Top : Cycling: Orange resident has qualified for world championships in France.

To think, it all started with a little white lie.

“Oh, Daaaaaad ,” 11-year-old Leigh Donovan said, pouring on the daughterly charm. “I’m getting straight A’s in school. Now will you buy me a BMX bike?”

Mike Donovan figured he didn’t have much choice. After all, he and his daughter had a deal: If she got straight A’s, he would finance her entry into the world of bicycle motocross. He didn’t think to check the report card first.

Ten years later, his daughter--now a professional mountain bike racer--recalls the story with a smile. So she actually had a few Bs mixed in with those A’s that year. What was she supposed to do? Tell the truth and never know the thrill of jumps and bumps and soaring through the air like those kids in “E.T.”?

Hardly. Not when the coolest bike on the block--a yellow and blue “P.K. Ripper”--was priced to sell at a nearby garage sale.

“It was my dream bike,” Donovan, of Orange, says. “It’s what started it all.”

That being a successful career in bicycle racing--first in BMX, now on the professional mountain bike circuit. Although she didn’t start racing mountain bikes until last year, Donovan, 21, is among the sport’s elite. She was one of 13 American women to qualify for next month’s World Mountain Bike Championships at Metabief, France. She is one of about 15 women in the United States who, through race earnings and sponsorships, are able to make a living from the sport.

Not a bad outcome for a former cheerleader at Villa Park High.

Donovan, who lives and trains in Durango, Colo., much of the year, finished second overall recently in the National Off-Road Bicycle Assn. dual slalom series--an event that pits two riders against each other and the clock on a slalom course. Her favorite event, though, is the downhill, one that involves navigating steep, bumpy trails sometimes at speeds of more than 50 m.p.h.

“Sometimes, at the starting gate, it’s like my sight will get brighter. I’ll see more clearly. I’m thinking, ‘I love this,’ Donovan says.

“But on the course, I’ll start to get a little scared. You’ve got so many thoughts going on through your head, you have to constantly stay focused or you’re going to get hurt.”

She knows all too well.

At a race in Vail this season, Donovan’s boyfriend, John Mutolo of Thousand Oaks, crashed in the downhill. The accident left him in a coma for five days, though now he is almost fully recovered. At the same race, Donovan saw a woman crash when the front forks of her bike cracked on impact at the finish line. She says the woman hasn’t raced since.

Donovan admits she is feeling a bit timid lately, but the 10 pounds of safety gear she wears--helmet, protective body suit, kidney belt, elbow and shoulder pads--when competing helps keep her confident. As does her ultra-competitive nature.

When working as a waitress last year, she was obsessed with being the ace of the staff. Her side work had to be perfect. Her speed and accuracy had to be the best. It was the same when she was a kid. The customers on her paper route never had to walk past their front step to get the paper; Donovan always made sure it was on their doormat just so.

“I wake up competitive,” she says. “I think I was born that way.”

At 5, Donovan blew away the competition in a neighborhood mini-Olympics. At 10, she was one of the top Bobby Sox softball players around. Just keeping pace with her was a challenge, her mother, Karen, says. Where Leigh went, havoc followed. Like the time she overturned mom’s sewing basket--needles and all--into the thick, shag carpeting . . .

“We couldn’t leave anything on the floor,” Karen said. “We had to put everything up. People would come over and say, ‘Uh, are you guys moving?’ ”

Once Leigh began to race, the Donovans moved plenty. Not from house to house, but from one BMX race to the next--Salt Lake City, Reno, Oklahoma City, Harrisburg, Pa. . . . At 13, Donovan was ranked No. 1 in the country in her age group. A local bike shop supplied her equipment and paid for her travel. Kids on the circuit wanted her autograph. But at Villa Park High, where she played soccer and dabbled in track and cheerleading, few knew of her success in BMX.

That, Donovan says, helps keep her current success in perspective. Mountain bike racing, is just a sport, she says, so why not have fun with it? Judging by the multi-colored plastic streamers attached to her handlebars, she manages that just fine. Donovan doesn’t follow a strict health-food diet; she she says she “trains” at Dairy Queen and Taco Bell. She doesn’t focus solely on riding; she fly fishes and plays football in snow whenever possible.

And while lately she has taken a fellow racer’s advice, trying to learn how to “get energy from rocks and dirt and trees and stuff,” Donovan says she’s not taking it all that seriously, either.

“She said you have to just breathe in and think ‘energy,’ ” Donovan says. “I’m like, ‘Oh, yeah, right. Get energy from a rock .’ But you know, it’s something I’m going to check out. I mean, I could use a little edge.”

And that, apparently, is no lie.