July 6, 2016 
If Andrew Lakeman had never returned to Belmont Park for the rest of his life, no one could blame him. It was on that very oval in May of 2007, after all, when Lakeman’s life changed forever.
He was an aspiring 32-year-old exercise rider turned jockey back then, hoping to carve out the successful career he envisioned when he left his native England several years before. But the horse Lakeman was riding that day clipped heels with the horse in front of him, sending both horse and rider tumbling to the turf. Lakeman landed face first and was then trampled by the horse directly behind.
The damage: three fractured vertebrae in his neck, broken ribs, punctured lung and broken sternum. The diagnosis: paralyzed from the waist down.
Lakeman spent the next few years struggling to come to terms with his new reality. He’d long battled substance abuse even before the accident, and soon returned down the self-destructive path.
Then, Lakeman found clarity; a way out of the darkness by returning to the very thing he’d always wanted: horses.
So he purchased a few horses and decided who better to train them than himself? He got clean and saddled his first horse in 2011.
He hasn’t looked back yet.
