Fatally injured exercise rider Luevano had only recently come to California

Exercise rider Alfredo Luevano had been part of the Los Alamitos backstretch community for only a few months before he died as a result of injuries sustained during morning training on Friday.

Luevano, 53, suffered a fatal injury when he was unseated while exercising a Quarter Horse filly. Details of the incident are unclear.

During the summer, Luevano was tipped by a friend that there was a demand for exercise riders at Los Alamitos. The job offer was too good to pass, according to his adult daughter, Lisbet Luevano.

Alfredo Luevano moved from his home in Bennett, Colo., east of Denver, to California to remain active in a sport that was always part of his life, she said.

Growing up in the Mexican state of Zacatecas, more than 300 miles southwest of Laredo, Texas, Luevano was involved in racing at a young age through a grandfather and his father, Lisbet said.

Luevano migrated to the United States in the early 1990s, and rode in the United States at Arapahoe Park in Colorado at times from 1999 to 2013, briefly at Eureka Downs in Kansas in 2002, and at Remington Park in Oklahoma in 2013. He was winless with 33 career mounts.

Luevano settled near Denver where he worked as an exercise rider at Arapahoe and had a tree maintenance company, Lisbet said. The family built a home in Bennett, not far from Denver’s airport, a few years ago, she said.

Being away from his wife, Marisela Martinez, five children, and six grandchildren to move to Los Alamitos was a change from Luevano’s recent life.

“He would go above and beyond for all of us,” Lisbet said.

Luevano was a freelance exercise rider at Los Alamitos. He was exercising a filly on behalf of trainer Mike Casselman when he was injured.

Luevano was attended to by ambulance personnel on the track before he was transported to nearby Long Beach Memorial where he was pronounced dead, the track said in a statement.

Casselman said in an interview with Daily Racing Form on Friday that he did not witness the incident.

“I’m sick about it,” Casselman said.

“He took a horse for me every now and then. He galloped for several people here and he came by my barn every day.”

Lisbet Luevano said over the weekend that the family had not made plans for a funeral. She said they were told that county investigators in California want to conduct an autopsy into the cause of death.

The family traveled from Colorado to California on Friday.

A moment of silence was scheduled before the first race at Los Alamitos on Sunday.

“It’s really tough,” Lisbet said. “I don’t think I can find the perfect words of how we want to remember him.

“He was great. He did a lot for us. He didn’t have a whole lot of free time. The little time he had, he spent with us.”