It’s Too Early to Say Larry’s a Legend

Larry The Legend is an awfully nice little horse. The bettors around Santa Anita have taken a particular shine to Larry. Some think he was named after Larry Bird. Some think he looks a little like Larry Bird.

Even while officially entering him Thursday, trainer Craig Lewis still wasn’t sure whether Larry The Legend would be running in Saturday’s $150,000 San Rafael Stakes. Be a shame if he didn’t.

As Lewis said: “He has such a following. He’s almost becoming a folk hero.”

A guy from the Daily Racing Form used the same description the other day. Folk hero. He wrote of Larry’s size, his speed, his “charisma.” Of how perhaps Larry really could become legendary.

The track crowd is curious as to what sort of 3-year-old Larry The Legend is. Some do know that he was named after Larry Lewis, brother of Craig, who was the manager of Long Beach’s back-to-back Little League World Series baseball champions. What they wonder is whether Larry the horse will be world-class himself.

Is he Triple Crown stakes bound? Could he outrun, say, Timber Country, the impressive juvenile champion that Wayne Lukas expects to saddle Saturday? Or the fast-improving French Deputy? Or how about the wonderful Afternoon Deelites, who probably won’t run again at Santa Anita until March 19?

There’s a $300,000 Louisiana Derby that same day that Larry The Legend might go after instead. And a stakes race at Remington Park in Oklahoma as well. The stakes are so high in horse racing. Do they test Larry now against the best to see what he is made of, or do they bring him along gradually and let him run against lesser horses to build his confidence?

One way or another, Lewis has a heck of a horse on his hands.

Or seems to, anyway.

“It’s too premature,” he said. “We had Cutlass Reality, who won a million and a half. Music Merci, who won a million and a half. Larry still has to prove himself.

“All I know, though, is that, so far, every race has been better than the prior one.”

Watching him win the Santa Catalina Stakes was a pleasure, for more reasons than one. Larry The Legend isn’t some horse everyone has been watching from the minute he could get up on all fours. He came to Craig Lewis in an unusual way.

As collateral.

The woman who owned Larry began to have money woes. There was a lawsuit. She was forced into bankruptcy. All four of her horses were put up for sale. The bankruptcy court gave a line of credit to Lewis, to whom the lady owed a considerable amount of money, permitting him to bid on her thoroughbreds. He took all four.

Larry cost him $2,500.

And the thing of it was, it was Lewis who got short-changed. The horses, he said, in no way could compensate him for what he was owed. “I lost. I was a victim,” he said.

Having been to law school, Lewis, 47, understood that sometimes you win, and other times you cut your losses and run. His money was gone forever. Larry The Legend would be his compensation.

The least he could do was name it for his brother, who was becoming a legend in Long Beach about the time Larry the horse was born. Craig’s nephew, Timmy, played for the baseball champions.

A trainer since 1981, Craig Lewis has a degree in history from California. The best horse he ever had was probably Cutlass Reality, who won the Hollywood Gold Cup in 1988 and three other stakes races. In the Breeders’ Cup Classic that year, Cutlass ran seventh.

Lewis lucked into Larry, though at the time it seemed like bad luck.

Now, he thinks the world of the little guy.

“I’d call it love,” Lewis said.

The San Rafael race has been lucky for horses before. Mister Frisky, A.P. Indy and Tabasco Cat all won it on their way to bigger things. We’ll be seeing Larry The Legend here or elsewhere, whenever he’s ready to fast-break.