A lot has happened to three-time Pro Stock Motorcycle champion Angelle Sampey since the Halloween weekend at Las Vegas in 2014. That’s when her return to the racetrack came to a gruesomely abrupt halt: she suffered a severely lacerated Achilles tendon and two others in her left leg as he helped unload the bike that Friday.

She said this Friday in Las Vegas that she had shoved that incident to the back of her mind,“ but the medic cart just passed a little while ago, and I saw it and I literally got a sick feeling and I went, ‘Uh-‘ I think about safety. I think about things now, stupid little things you don’t think you can hurt yourself with. I don’t help with the set-up [of the pit], and sometimes I feel bad, because I used to help all the time. But that’s how I got hurt.” She relented last year and was trying to put her motorcycle on the trailer when, she said, “my foot got caught on something and they were pushing the bike and the peg pushed against my Achilles real hard.” She shuddered. She said, “I didn’t think rolling the bike with me sitting on it on the ramp would be dangerous. And just that little thing right there, I almost busted it again.”

By last fall, she had settled into her manager role with Cory Reed’s Team Liberty Racing. And they’re forging ahead, with additional engine-building help from Larry Morgan and his son, Nick, this year.

On the home front, she and husband Seth Drago have been foster parents for the past two years to a little girl, now age 4, who joins big sister Ava Jane, 7. They are in the legal process of acquiring full parental rights. The pending court decision (along with Ava Jane’s recovery from a brief bout of respiratory illness that has the former nurse calling home every half-hour) has her distracted a bit this weekend.    

“I can’t stand the waiting, but I don’t have a choice,” Sampey said of the adoption process. When she receives news from the judge and it’s positive, she said she plans to announce it via social media: “If you see a post that says, ‘My prayers have been answered,’ she’s staying with us.”

Moreover, Sampey took up a challenge from her husband following her 48th birthday in August. She had been critical of her own appearance, so he dared her to do something about it by setting up a course with Total Nutrition Technology and a personal trainer. She has chiseled herself into a figure that would be enviable by women half her age. She also she said she’s proud of “eating clean,” a true accomplishment for someone who travels so much and is constantly on the go.   

Hector Arana Jr. started the season in 10th place and immediately dropped to 13th place.

But he has improved steadily, and with Sunday’s Pro Stock... https://t.co/iaa0oK5y2r

— Competition Plus (@competitionplus) October 29, 2018