The Andrade family poses for a photo with Uno Corona Mas on the backside at Los Alamitos Race Course.

© Kevin Sullivan , OCR Staff Photographer

CYPRESS, CA—JANUARY 31, 2016—She watches him maneuver his wheelchair methodically around the clumps of dirt and toward a stall, the former jockey having once covered the ground here at speeds near 50 mph. Yes, this sport crippled her husband – but only after first killing her fiancée.

And yet, here is Elena Andrade, sitting inside her barn, next to a bale of hay, making sure to speak loud enough to be heard over the neighing nearby.

“It can be hard for people to figure out,” she said. “The same thing that hurt you is what you want to be around? But trust me. The horses have helped heal a lot of things.”

Horse racing has given her a family, a son and a career, a past and a future and a present, one that never has looked better.

It has given her everything she has today, all her joys, hopes and dreams. It has given her a life, this generous sport that otherwise has done nothing but take.

Sometimes, the stories worth telling aren’t at all simple to tell. Sometimes, you have to ignore what your logic keeps whispering and listen instead to someone else’s heart. That’s just the way it is, sometimes, when the feeling they’re feeling is something as deep as unrelenting love.

So here’s the heart of a fourth-generation trainer, a woman who – while growing up – tried everything from attending community college to working at KFC without success; the daughter of a trainer and a jockey, a lifer who kept coming back to the only life she has ever really known:

“This is what I want to do,” Elena said, her eyes scanning the Andrade Racing Stables at Los Alamitos Race Course. “This is what I know and what I think I’m good at. Nothing else makes me this happy. This is what I love to do.”

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Courtesy ocregister.com