Abel Lezcano Back at Del Mar With New Lease on Life

A jockey's desire to ride is very strong. That's why you see them return from serious injuries without any hesitation. The time spent away from riding is grueling for them. The rehab is hard enough, but not being able to get up on a horse and do what they love to do can be torture. Now, imagine a rider being told by his doctors that he will never ride again. A real gut-punch for a veteran jockey like Abel Lezcano, who had been riding professionally for over a decade when he got the news from his doctor. The problem for any medical professional consulting a jockey is that it had better be a very good reason. A kidney transplant, perhaps. In 2020, amid the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, Abel Lezcano was diagnosed with non-functioning kidneys. One was operating at 2%, the other not at all. Doctors blamed it on high blood pressure. He had been getting headaches but kept riding, battling through the fatigue. "Because of the kidneys, my heart was pushing a lot, and it grew 2%," Lezcano said. "My legs were feeling weak, but because of my family, I kept pushing." At first, they thought he had contracted COVID-19, but when Maria noticed a marked change in her husband's appearance, she took him to the emergency room, where he got an entirely unexpected diagnosis. "I'm at the hospital and I was telling the doctor, 'I got to ride tomorrow'," the jockey said. "He's looking at my wife and saying, 'No, he's not.' I was in shock." Lezcano had been riding horses since he was 11 in his native Panama. When he was 18, he went to Florida and started his U.S. racing career at Calder. It wasn't long before the talented young jockey was riding stakes races at Saratoga Race Course. "One day I see my name on the TV," Lezcano recalled. "'Longshot winner,' it said. Wow." After seven years riding in New York, he branched out into the Midwest and Kentucky and even did one season at Santa Anita Park and Del Mar in 2016. That year, he won the Royal Heroine Stakes (G3T) at Santa Anita aboard Nancy From Nairobi (GB) for trainer John Sadler. But it all came to a screeching halt in the summer of 2020. It's common knowledge that you only need one kidney to survive, but for Lezcano, the one he had working was barely working at all. They tried dialysis, but that didn't help, leaving just one option for the then 30-year-old Panamanian rider—a transplant. Unfortunately, no one in his immediate family (brothers, sisters, and cousins) was a match. "The doctor said it has to be blood (relatives)," Lezcano's wife, Maria, explained. "So we thought family. Then one of the doctors in Miami asked me if I had done the test, and I said, 'No, we're not brother or sister,' and he said it doesn't matter. So I did it and everything was a 100% (match)." The operating doctor would say afterward that Maria's kidney was one of the best and healthiest he had ever worked with, and the transplant was deemed a success. Still, doctors told Abel, 'No more riding,' out of fear that he would fall off a horse and rupture the fine work the doctors had done. Lezcano respected their decision, but he couldn't see himself walking away from riding altogether. "Only the one up there is going to tell me when I cannot ride," Lezcano said. "They tell me, 'You can go back to the racetrack in one year and see the horses, but do not get too close.'" That was because his immune system was still low from the operation. So instead, Lezcano went to work building up his body. In two months, he was on the Equiciser, the device jockeys use to get back into riding shape. "I started jogging a little bit," Lezcano said. "Finally, I'm running five miles a day." Six months after the operation, as opposed to the year his doctors had ordered, Lezcano visited the racetrack. He donned three masks and was constantly washing his hands. Turns out one of the most challenging stages of Lezcano's comeback was convincing trainers to give him a chance. He had not been up on a horse for over a year and a half, so trainers and owners were skeptical. "No one wanted to give me a chance," he recalled. "Two years and a kidney transplant, they thought, 'He's not going to be the same.'" New Year's Day is often thought of as the time to start anew, to get a fresh beginning. It was never more relevant than for Abel Lezcano in 2022. It was on that day that trainer Anna Meah gave Lezcano a mount in Lubna (GB) at Turfway Park, his first since July of 2020. "I was very nervous and excited," Lezcano noted. "First time back. We finished fourth." He has been riding ever since, moving his tack around the Midwest until this summer when he came out west to Del Mar. He racked up two winners on opening day and has five for the meet. "I ride every race like it's a stakes race," Lezcano said. "Give me more opportunity; I'm 100% percent better."