SANTA ANITA DERBY : A Pairing That Fits No Image

You all know what a successful horse trainer looks like--five-gallon hat, boots, string tie. Sleeps in a stable, plates his own horses, never talks above a whisper if he talks at all. Carries a clock with him but works his horse in the dark so nobody but he will know how fast the animal is. He spends his life shopping for a price. He answers to a name like “Plain Ben,” or “Sunny Jim,” or “Cactus Joe.”

And we all know what a Kentucky Derby horse is. A big, imposing stud with a pedigree as royal as Queen Victoria’s. Someone bought him as a yearling at Keeneland for a million or two, outbidding several desert sheiks and a Japanese billionaire or two. He was bred in the Bluegrass Country and has been as coddled as any member of the House of Windsor all his life. Lloyd’s of London insures him in case he gets hurt on his way to the Kentucky Derby.

Now, consider the trainer of the horse, Larry The Legend, which won the next-best thing to the Kentucky Derby on Saturday, the Santa Anita Derby.

Craig Lewis doesn’t look as if he just came from the bunkhouse. He speaks in whole sentences. He graduated from UC Berkeley, for cryin’ out loud. You wonder why he isn’t on the Supreme Court or the faculty at Yale or the Clinton White House. He wears a suit and tie and looks and talks like the history major he was.

His horse is even more of a revelation. Larry The Legend didn’t cost a mil or two in the ring at Saratoga, he cost $2,500. You heard me.

You can’t even buy a good used car for that. And thoroughbred horses, if you haven’t been paying attention, have been bringing prices you used to have to pay to get railroads.

You would figure a $2,500 horse couldn’t pull a fruit wagon, never mind overtake the flower of the American track.

Kentucky Derby horses are often big old 1,200-pound dudes, muscled like linemen with the long smooth strides and the long neck of a Citation or Man O’War. Larry The Legend is kind of a runt, barely 15 hands high. He may weigh 900 pounds. After a big meal.

Of course, big old horses frequently get in their own way and corner like yachts.

They’re willful brutes who may sulk, kick or bite and require stern measures in handling. Larry The Legend is as well-behaved as an altar boy. He does what he’s told. If he were human, he’d be a butler.

The college grad trainer and the runt of the litter thoroughbred were reluctant partners. Craig Lewis got the horse in a bankruptcy hearing.

It happens. Sometimes, people bidding on an old house with an attic find an old Rembrandt in the bottom of a trunk.

But trainer Lewis had to take the horse. Or otherwise go unpaid. He immediately set about to trying to unload this horse. Let somebody else pay the feed bills.

He got lucky. Nobody wanted the horse, Craig Lewis included. He didn’t even like the horse’s name, which was something French and unpronounceable. He renamed him Larry The Legend in honor of his brother Larry, a lawyer who had taken his Long Beach Little League teams to two world championships.

But, if Lewis had his horse in a window with a price tag on him, he soon had second thoughts when he got a clock on the little bay colt. The horse was not only fast, he was game. As someone once said of Jockey Longden, you could get to him. But you couldn’t get by him.

In the Santa Anita Derby on Saturday, it became apparent it was this quality that carried him by the field. He was a beaten horse in the stretch duel with Afternoon Deelites. The horsemen thought so. And so did Afternoon Deelites’ rider.

You see, on the track, form calls for a horse that is passed or otherwise shuffled back in the stretch to pack it in, fade to black, throw in his hand.

Larry The Legend wasn’t having any of it. He not only doggedly maintained his pace, he quickened it. The fight wasn’t over. He caught Afternoon Deelites at the wire, won by a head.

He should have been called “Rocky.” He was like a fighter who gets up, a tennis player who comes back from love-40 and set point to win.

So, he has won the Santa Anita Derby. Will he join the other eight winners who went on win the Kentucky Derby in the 58 years of the running of the West Coast Derby? Or will he be one of the 31 others who failed to parlay the victories?

The Santa Anita Derby was 17 years old and it had 15 runnings before a Santa Anita Derby winner also won at Louisville.

But, as usual, that’s not the whole story. For instance, in 1940, Gallahadion finished 13th in the Santa Anita Derby. But, he went on to win the Kentucky Derby. In 1938, Dauber finished second in the Santa Anita Derby--and second in the Kentucky Derby. And he won the Preakness.

Hill Gail was the first Santa Anita winner to win at Churchill Downs. Since then, only seven other Santa Anita winners have also won at Kentucky.

Only one Santa Anita winner has gone on to be a Triple Crown winner, Affirmed in 1978. Only six Santa Anita winners have won a Preakness. Only three have won a Belmont. In fact, it was not until 1975 that a Santa Anita Derby winner did win a Belmont.

The facts are, Santa Anita victors have become more competitive of late. Since 1986, Santa Anita Derby victors have won three Kentucky Derbies, two Preaknesses and two Belmonts. It has become less fashionable to sneer at California racers as “nice little sprinters.”

Larry The Legend is not anybody’s nice little anything. He’s a fighter who can take it, a gamer who doesn’t know when he’s licked.

Afternoon Deelites had nothing to be ashamed of. Were it not for a slightly overconfident ride by his jockey, his head might have hit the wire first.

But it was a victory for the blue-collar guy. He got off the floor to win. He might, figuratively speaking, have a cut eye, broken nose and swollen ear, but he’s still throwing punches. You might beat him. But you’ll know you’ve been in a fight. A boy from the ‘hood. And even when you think you’ve got him beat, don’t turn your back on him. If you look back, he’ll be gaining on you.