The fact that of the 22 horses fatally injured during the current Santa Anita Park meeting none of their riders was seriously injured speaks to the disproportionate dangers shared by man and beast in the acts of racing and training. The sadness is tinged with relief, but only a little. Victor Espinoza was not so lucky last summer – and it is a matter of luck – when Bobby Abu Dhabi suffered a catastrophic injury during a workout at Del Mar and went down at high speed. Thrown hard, Espinoza experienced temporary paralysis and extensive damage to his spinal column. He needed months of healing before he could even begin to think about serious rehabilitation. At some point, however, when the question was asked, “Could I ever ride again?” the answer came back, “It’s possible.” That was all Espinoza needed. His return to action on Feb. 18 with a second-place finish aboard a horse for John Sadler was a triumph of both the will and medical science, with a giant assist from Espinoza’s dedication to physical fitness. Since that day, Espinoza has ridden in only one race. The combination of wet weather, uncertain entries, scratches, and outright cancellations of racing days at Santa Anita has kept the Hall of Famer all dressed up with no place to go. He is not alone, of course. But, at 46, he is anxious to put his amazing recovery to the test and prove he still belongs among the elite jockeys of his generation. “I feel pretty good,” Espinoza said this week from his home near Santa Anita. “I gained a little weight because of the medication I was taking, but as soon as I changed that I dropped the weight in a week. Now I’m not taking anything, which is what I prefer, because then I know exactly how I’m doing. “Those first two rides back were not a challenge for me, and I like a challenge,” he added. “So I hope we start running again soon.” Prior to the fatality during training hours on Thursday, Santa Anita management had announced a resumption of racing on March 22. At this writing, there was no indication that might change. Espinoza took advantage of the track closure last week to visit his family in Mexico, and he plans to be among the high-profile riders on the scene for morning workouts. Beyond that, there is only waiting, which is why he did not mind a pleasant trip down memory lane to mark the running of the Rebel Stakes in two divisions at Oaklawn Park on Saturday. Four years ago, on March 14, 2015, the reigning 2-year-old champion American Pharoah embarked on his 3-year-old campaign against six opponents in the 1 1/16-mile Rebel. Espinoza, who can be a bit of a scamp, was asked what he remembered about the race. “Did I win?” he said, then laughed. Yes, he won, by more than six lengths in a gallop. And yet there were reasons to be cautious going in. The track was sloppy. The colt hadn’t run in more than five months. And the clock was running on getting to the Kentucky Derby in optimum condition. “I’ve ridden a lot of good horses as 2-year-olds who dominated every race, but when they jump to being 3-year-olds it almost seems like they go backwards,” Espinoza said. “My greatest hope was that he’d come back running the way he did before, but they need to show you in a race. “I knew he was fit by the way he had been working at Santa Anita,” Espinoza added. “I never worked him – Martin Garcia did – but I was always watching from the grandstand, and he was absolutely amazing.” Espinoza described his mindset going into the Rebel as “worried and excited.” Then the gates opened – at which point American Pharoah went to the front despite losing a shoe – and the rider immediately got a warm feeling of utter confidence. “He was his old self, like the first time I rode him,” said the rider, who at that point had been aboard American Pharoah for victories in the Del Mar Futurity and FrontRunner. “It was like he was just jogging around the racetrack, the best feeling ever. “When we got into the stretch I looked back and there was nobody there,” Espinoza said. “That’s when I started thinking about winning the Kentucky Derby. I knew that if he could stay in one piece, they would not beat him.” Let the record show that American Pharoah added the Arkansas Derby, won a gut-wrenching Kentucky Derby, then added the Preakness and the Belmont Stakes to become the first winner of the Triple Crown since 1978. Espinoza’s life was changed forever because of his association with the colt, who was acclaimed 2015 Horse of the Year and retired to stud. All that was then. Now Espinoza must deal with the next chapter of a career that has included 3,358 wins and earnings by his mounts of nearly $198 million, good for ninth on the list of active riders. Clearly, what he can do from this point forward would be gravy, but Espinoza is determined to make it count. “I had hoped to be ready for opening day at Santa Anita in December, but I wasn’t quite yet,” Espinoza said. “So now, when we start again, I’ll think of it as another opening day.”