WITH THE ODDS STACKED AGAINST THEM, BLACK TRAINER AND HIS $11,000 HORSE TAKE ON THE KENTUCKY DERBY

“This horse is proving anyone with a dream can make it to the Derby stage.”

Meet Larry Demeritte, the second Black trainer in the 150-year history of the Kentucky Derby to have a horse in The Run for the Roses.

With 50-1 odds, his horse, a three-year-old colt named West Saratoga, is a long shot. But that’s a familiar concept to 74-year-old Demeritte. The Bahamas native, who has excelled in a sport where Black trainers are considerably rare, has been battling cancer on and off for nearly 30 years. 

Demeritte was reportedly first diagnosed with cancer in 1996. He beat it, only for it to return in 2018. He’s been enduring monthly chemotherapy treatments ever since. 

“He’s been through some stuff, definitely,” Harry Veruchi, West Saratoga’s owner, told The Athletic. “This horse, it gives him a reason to go to work.”

Demeritte’s horse is an underdog too.

While the costliest horse in this year’s Derby field, Sierra Leone, was purchased for $2.3 million, Demeritte bought West Saratoga as a yearling for just $11,000. 

“I always say, ‘I have Champagne tastes on a beer budget,’ so I buy good horses cheap, but that doesn’t mean I buy cheap horses,” Demeritte told The Athletic. “I can’t afford the horses that have the papers, so I try to buy the horse that can make the paper.” 

Demeritte, who lives on a 30-acre farm in Frankfort, Kentucky, had a difficult childhood. He was raised by his grandmother alongside 13 of his cousins in Nassau. He first learned about horses from his father, a trainer himself, who broke them in a backyard corral, NBC Sports reports. Demeritte started training his own horses in his 20s, and in 1976 moved to the United States to work as a groom. 

In 1981, he went out on his own as a trainer, determined not to be limited by the color of his skin. For decades he happily worked on the fringes of the sport with modest success through the years. Then came West Saratoga.

“I told the boys in the barn, this is our big horse,” Demeritte recalled to Sports Illustrated. “This is the first horse I’ve trained in a long time that has gears. You have to manage him right. I feel like the route we took was the best route for him, to get him here without a lot of stress. When the right day comes with the big boys, he’ll be ready for them.”

Demeritte hopes that that “right day” is tomorrow’s Kentucky Derby. 

“This is truly amazing how we got to this position with this horse,” he told The Associated Press. “I’m hopeful people will see our story and become interested in this sport because this horse is proving anyone with a dream can make it to the Derby stage."

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2024-05-03T19:31:40Z dg43tfdfdgfd