RIDING HOPE

Elena Andrade was talking about the courage her young husband will need.

Oscar Andrade, married less than a year and a father for less than a month, is 21 and could be a paraplegic as the result of spinal-cord injuries, suffered while riding a quarter horse that broke her back and fell on him at Los Alamitos Race Course last week.

Elena Andrade seems to have enough courage to satisfy the entire family--herself, her husband and an unknowing Oscar Andrade Jr., born Sept. 17, at seven pounds 13 ounces, only 10 days before his father’s tragic spill.

This is not the first time Elena has been in love with a jockey, nor is this the first time that her love has been riddled by one of horse racing’s cruelest givens: Jockeys, in the course of their careers, will inevitably be thrown from horses, and while only a handful will have trouble getting up, a few will not get up at all.

Elena Andrade--Elena Aquino then--was in love with one of those few in 1999. He was J.C. Gonzalez, whose profile was not unlike Oscar Andrade’s: a young rider on the threshold of a big career.

It was another September day when Gonzalez, 23, was riding a thoroughbred at the L.A. County Fair in Pomona. The horse broke both front legs and tossed his rider. Every other horse in the field was behind him, and the defenseless Gonzalez was dead, of head injuries, by the time he reached the track’s first-aid station.

“We were only a week from the big day,” Elena Andrade said Tuesday. She and J.C. Gonzalez were engaged and about to be married.

Now Oscar.

In a fourth-floor bed next to a window at Long Beach Memorial Medical Center, he is two days away from today’s scheduled surgery, and just before lunch he has five visitors, two of whom are Elena and Oscar Jr., who is tiny and pink, the way a newborn ought to be.

Comfy in his white blanket, the quiet, wide-awake baby is placed on the bed, at his father’s side. The injured jockey can use his arms but has no feeling from the waist down. After forcing smiles all morning, saying little, Andrade breaks into a wide, sincere grin. A baby has effectively diced his melancholy.

Slowly, Oscar Jr. moves his left hand toward his head, which he can barely reach. If only there had been a photographer. At least there were five witnesses. This is this baby boy’s first salute. His parents beam, everybody beams.

“We think he’s got Oscar’s eyes,” Elena Andrade says. “But I think he’s got my fat cheeks. Oscar was hoping for a girl. But he was happy to give him his name when we found out.”

The mother has bright, twinkling eyes and is short, like her husband. Until she learned she was pregnant, she worked at Los Alamitos, as an assistant trainer, and ponied horses, escorting them to the track.

Long before J.C. Gonzalez and Oscar Andrade came into her life, she was wedded to the racetrack. Her father rode quarter horses and her mother trained them. Not surprisingly, Elena Aquino wanted to be a jockey.

“I loved to ride,” she said. “But my father didn’t want me to. He said it was too dangerous.”

She has enough hope to fill the hospital room.

“I’m just happy he’s here,” she says of her husband. “What happened, happened. It was a freak thing, but there’s no sense in trying to explain why. Considering, I think Oscar’s spirits are good. Our son has made it easier. Oscar has to be strong. We all have to be strong.”

The Andrades knew each other for a couple of years before they were married eight months ago.

“We decided to do things fast,” Elena said, understandably sounding fatalistic. “Get married, have a baby. We wanted to do everything quick. We wanted to enjoy everything.”

When they met, Elena spoke no Spanish and her future husband, who came from Guadalajara to Los Alamitos two years ago, spoke no English. Now Elena speaks limited Spanish.

“My Spanish has gotten better than Oscar’s English has gotten,” she said.

She was at Fairplex Park the day J.C. Gonzalez died. He was the 141st jockey to lose his life in a race since 1940. At least 50 riders around the country are disabled.

Elena Andrade was at home a week ago, the night Andrade and his 3-year-old filly, Ali Mc Cash, went down. Angela Aquino, Elena’s sister and a media aide in the press box, called her from the track.

Gonzalez had never ridden his final mount before. Wolfhunt by name, he was an unwanted, sore-legged colt that had bounced from trainer to trainer during a 23-race career. Ali Mc Cash, who was euthanized on the track, was a maiden 2-year-old making only her fourth start.

“Oscar knew his horse,” Elena said. “He had ridden her, galloped her and was familiar with her. He doesn’t remember anything about what happened. The gates opened [in a 300-yard race] and it happened [after about 100 yards]. He can’t remember anything after the gate opened.”

Oscar Andrade’s left eye is badly bloodshot. Near his left hairline is a large rectangular bruise, which probably came when the 1,000-pound horse fell on his protective helmet.

“He’s got a long road ahead of him, but he’ll do it,” Elena said. “This surgery will stabilize his condition. Then there will be a lot of therapy.”

The surgeon comes to explain to the Andrades what will be done. The fifth vertebra, badly damaged, must be reinforced, with rods, screws and hooks. There is bone missing, and bone must be scraped and borrowed from his pelvic region to supplement the fusion. Unblinkingly, quietly, the Andrades listen.

Andrade’s mother, who had four other children, one of them also a jockey, lives near Guadalajara and is trying to arrange a visa to fly to Los Angeles soon.

The surgeon leaves and Elena starts to talk about why she wasn’t at the track the night of the spill.

“We were waiting for the Saturday, two days later, to all go out,” she says. “I was going to take the baby, and we were going to take pictures of his first day at the track. Oscar was going to be riding that good filly of his [Sassy Smith in the $336,600 Breeders Futurity] and we were hoping to take the baby to the winner’s circle for the pictures.”

Saturday, Sassy Smith did win, with Eddie Garcia replacing Andrade. Before the race, Garcia had pledged his share of purse--which turned out to be about $13,000--to the Andrades.

Garcia, 36, is one of quarter horse racing’s premier riders. He has ridden almost 2,200 winners, winning six meet titles at Los Alamitos, but this year he was trailing Andrade, who had won 121 races. Garcia broke his knee last year and sat out more than four months.

Minutes after Sassy Smith put her nose on the wire, Garcia jumped into the arms of Jaime Gomez, the trainer who had heard about Andrade, winning match races in Mexico, and encouraged him to come to California.

“That was Oscar’s win with all my heart,” Garcia said. “Oscar’s like my brother. I wanted to win this race more than any in my life. I feel honored to have done it.”

At Long Beach Memorial, Bill Shoemaker’s name, for some reason, comes up.

Shoemaker rode in more than 40,000 races, winning 8,833 of them, but then, retired from riding, injuries in a single-car accident turned him into a quadriplegic.

“Oscar was doing what he loved when he was hurt,” Elena Andrade said, making a distinction. “He told me that. He said he was glad that at least it was for that, and I know what he’s saying. It wasn’t because of a car accident. It was because of his love for riding.”