Larry Demeritte will be first Black trainer in Kentucky Derby since 1989. How he beat the odds

MIDWAY, Kentucky — It’s two weeks until the biggest race of his life, and horse trainer Larry Demeritte is fumbling through his phone to find the song he can’t get out of his head these days.

He plays it at the barn. He listens to it at his home. He sings it for a visitor to his office.

“To dream the impossible dream. To fight the unbeatable foe. To bear with unbearable sorrow. To run where the brave dare not go.”

The song is “The Impossible Dream” from "Man of La Mancha," the 1965 Broadway musical.

Don Quixote tilted at windmills. Larry Demeritte is chasing roses.

“It has deep, deep meaning for the journey we’re on,” Demeritte explains.  

The 70-something-year-old trainer — Demeritte refuses to reveal his actual age — has been in the business for as long as he can remember and is set to saddle a horse for the Kentucky Derby for the first time on May 4 at Churchill Downs.

You want an underdog story, an “impossible dream?” Consider Demeritte and his horse, West Saratoga.

A gray son of Exaggerator, West Saratoga was purchased for $11,000 on the final day of the 2022 Keeneland September Yearling Sale. By contrast, fellow Kentucky Derby contender Sierra Leone was purchased for $2.3 million as a yearling.

“If he’d have gone for $12,000,” Demeritte said of West Saratoga, “I wouldn’t have him.”

Demeritte’s philosophy at the sales is simple: “I buy good horses cheap. I don’t buy cheap horses.”

After West Saratoga won a key race for 2-year-olds last year, Demeritte quipped, “I have champagne tastes with a beer budget.”

Demeritte is a Bahamas native who moved to the United States in 1976 to chase his Kentucky Derby dream. He’ll be the first Black trainer in the Kentucky Derby since 1989, when Hank Allen finished sixth with Northern Wolf.

Black trainers dominated the early days of the Kentucky Derby, winning seven of the first 17 from 1875-91. But Demeritte will be just the second Black trainer in the race since 1951.

“It’s a good honor, but it’s more than that to me,” said Demeritte, who plans to wear a black, blue and gold necktie at the Kentucky Derby to represent the colors of the Bahamas flag. “Coming from an island, coming from the Caribbean, that makes me a lot more proud, that the island can produce someone who can make it to the Derby.”

'I never felt defeated'

The biggest victory for Demeritte is that he’s here at all.

In 1996, he was diagnosed with bone cancer and told by doctors he had five years to live. In 2018, “they gave me six months to live,” Demeritte said. He also has amyloidosis, a rare disease that occurs when a protein builds up in organs.

He wakes up each morning at 5 and assesses the pain in his hip and back and legs. He pokes his foot to check the fluid buildup. The big concern, he says, is the fluid building around his heart.

“I’m still here,” Demeritte says with a smile. “God had a better plan for me than what man has. … I never felt defeated. I always say, ‘I’ll do the chemo, but I think the doctor’s wrong.’”

Follow Demeritte around at a racetrack for a few minutes and you’ll quickly learn his peers are big fans.

“Can I have your autograph, Larry?” one asks as she rides by on a horse during a recent morning at Keeneland. “You’re a star!” another shouts as Demeritte answers questions from the media.

“I’m more happy for Larry than I am for myself,” West Saratoga owner Harry Veruchi said. “Larry’s fighting this cancer deal right now, and he’s staying on top of that. He’s always wanted to go to the Derby. What better guy to go with than Larry Demeritte.”

Demeritte and his seven brothers learned the game from their father, Thomas, a leading trainer in the Bahamas.

Thomas Demeritte was killed in the 1980s while trying to break a horse.

“What better way to go than to die doing something you love,” Larry Demeritte said.

With $100 in his pockets, Demeritte left the Bahamas for Chicago in 1976 and got a job as a groom for Oscar Dishman, a trainer from Lexington.

“A lot of my friends and a lot of the owners I trained for couldn’t believe I was willing to give up being a trainer to come to the U.S. and be a groom,” Demeritte said. “But what else was left here to accomplish? I needed to go out.”

Demeritte went out on his own as a trainer in 1981 and hasn’t stopped. He got his first victory in 1984 and never has had more than 12 in a year — a solid two weeks for fellow trainers Steve Asmussen, Brad Cox or Todd Pletcher.

Over the five-year span from 2019-23, Demeritte entered an average of 52 races a year, winning 9.3% of them.

Patrick Demeritte, Larry’s younger brother and a helping hand around the barn the past few weeks, said a love of horses kept Larry in the game.

“When you grow up in the sport, it’s different than when you walk into it,” Patrick Demeritte said. “We learned the sport without getting a paycheck. We don’t worry about the money part of it. We deal with the horse and let the horse take us through.”

'His tenacity is overwhelming'

West Saratoga won the Grade 3 Iroquois in September at Churchill Downs, giving Larry Demeritte just the second graded-stakes victory of his career. West Saratoga’s career earnings of $460,140 is more than double that of any horse Demeritte has ever trained.

Not bad for an $11,000 purchase.

“A price is a price … but horses don’t know what they cost,” assistant trainer Donte Lowery said. “They all have four legs. You can put a number on a horse, but it really doesn’t mean too much.”

When West Saratoga finished second in the Grade 3 Jeff Ruby Steaks on March 23 at Turfway Park, he clinched a spot in the Kentucky Derby.

Demeritte may not have given up on his Kentucky Derby dream, but those around him weren’t so hopeful.

“I’ve been in this business for 42 years, and I’ve had trainers tell me a horse was going to be a runner and blah, blah, blah,” Veruchi said. “At one point when Larry was telling me that, it was in one ear and out the other because of what I’ve been through in the past. But he kept saying it. I thought, ‘Hmm, maybe we do have something here.’ And we did.”

Added Inga Demeritte, Larry’s wife: “I gave up on this, I must say, a long time ago. But he was so tenacious. His tenacity is overwhelming. He’s strong, and he stuck by his word.”

Demeritte bought a house in Midway in 2000 and established East Windwood Farm. His living room — where a painting of Secretariat hangs over the mantel — leads out to a deck that overlooks a pond and acres where sheep and horses roam.

He has 11 horses in training, stabled at the Keeneland-affiliated Thoroughbred Training Center just down the road in Lexington.

That’s where you’ll find West Saratoga and Demeritte, his song of hope fueling “The Impossible Dream.”

“And the world will be better for this. That one man scorned and covered with scars. Still strove with his last ounce of courage. To reach the unreachable star.”

Jason Frakes: 502-582-4046; jfrakes@courier-journal.com. Follow on X @KentuckyDerbyCJ.