He’s the Perfect Trainer for the Perfect Race Horse

Even the horses love Laz Barrera. They must. They run right out of their breeding for him. There is a saying around the race track: If you’ve got a cheap horse, there’s a dozen guys you can give him to. If you’ve got a good horse, there’s only one--give him to Laz Barrera.

A good trainer cannot make a bad horse win. But a bad trainer can make a good horse lose.

In 1976, the Puerto Rican owners of Bold Forbes thought they had a pretty good horse. Bold Forbes had beaten the best Puerto Rico had to offer, but beating the best at El Commandante was a far cry from beating the best at Aqueduct, Santa Anita, Churchill Downs and Belmont Park.

By the time Laz got through with him, Bold Forbes had won at Santa Anita, Aqueduct (the Wood Memorial), Churchill Downs (the Kentucky Derby) and Belmont (the Belmont) and came within a clipped and bleeding coronet suffered in the Preakness of winning the Triple Crown.

It was an impressive bit of conditioning. Bold Forbes was out of a Bold Ruler line and not supposed to be able to get any distance longer than 1 1/16 miles. “He’ll need a cab at the eighth pole,” sneered the handicappers. But Bold Forbes not only got the Derby’s 1 1/4 miles, he won the Belmont’s 1 1/2 miles.

But that was 14 years ago. Earlier this year, Laz Barrera got another call from Puerto Rico. Martha Fernandez, whose husband is in the construction business on the island, explained to Laz that she bought this colt at the Ocala sales for $15,000, but while his breeding seemed undistinguished, he won 13 consecutive races. He might deserve the big leagues, and she hated to think she was keeping him in the bush leagues.

Now, Laz sometimes feels like a football coach who gets called by an enthusiastic alumnus about a can’t-miss prospect. And when he asks, “And who is this phenom?” the answer comes back, “My nephew.”

So, Laz tried to be diplomatic. It’s his stock-in-trade. “What’s the horse’s name?” he wanted to know. “Mister Frisky,” came the answer.

Now, that didn’t have a nice macho ring to it like Man o’War or Aristides or Gallant Fox. It sounded a little Disneylandish, a little frivolous. Maybe the horse was, too. Laz temporized. “Send me some tapes,” he sighed.

You can’t always tell a bad horse from moving pictures. But you can spot a good one right away. Laz watched the tapes and felt his scalp begin to prickle. This was the greatest movie horse since Trigger. The owner phoned. “Do you think this horse can win in the States?” she wanted to know. “Ma’am!” Barrera exploded. “This horse can win anywhere !”

Recalls Laz: “This horse had a style of running only the great ones have, where his feet stay low to the ground and he just eats up the track. I spent four days watching the tape and I couldn’t find a fault with him. He never made a wrong move.”

Still, San Juan is not Santa Anita. Laz brought his colt up out of quarantine and dropped him into the seven-furlong San Vicente Stakes, traditional steppingstone for the Santa Anita (and Kentucky) Derby and a tough test for an immigrant. Mister Frisky turned back promising 3-year-olds such as Tarascon and Top Cash with ease. Three weeks later, Laz tacked him for the tougher one-mile San Rafael Stakes. He won more easily--15 for 15, one off Citation’s all-time string of 16 for 16.

Is he another Citation? Is he another Bold Forbes? Is he another Man o’War? Is he a freak? A monster (race-trackers’ word for horses that outrun their breeding and run past horses theoretically their superiors)? Or is he just a nice sprinter making the most of a bad year for 3-year-olds?

First of all, Mister Frisky looks like a champion. Statues in the paddock look like this. He has this great, gorgeous coating of solid copper; there is not a white stocking or nose blaze to break up the burnished metal tone of his skin. They called Man o’War Big Red because he glinted like this in the sunlight, and Mister Frisky looks like the color of a brand-new shiny penny.

Laz Barrera’s Cuban accent has been described as a cross between Desi Arnaz with hiccups and Ricardo Montalban with a mouthful of mashed potatoes--”You can never tell whether Laz is speaking English with a Spanish accent or Spanish with an English accent,” cracks fellow trainer Charlie Whittingham. It is sometimes indecipherable in any language. But he gets positively eloquent on the subject of Mister Frisky. William Jennings Bryan couldn’t say it any better.

Laz notes, among other things, that Mister Frisky is a placid individual. He has that attitude of the player who knows he’s good. He has that ability all great athletes have of being able to relax between spurts of competition. If he were a fighter, he would be able to go to sleep on the rubbing table an hour before a title fight. He never arrives in a paddock awash with anxiety and soapy sweat. “He has not been touched with the whip--at least not in this country,” Laz boasts. He does it his way.

If Mister Frisky gets him to the winner’s circle in Kentucky the first Saturday in May, Laz Barrera will have the best winning percentage of any trainer in the history of the Derby. He already is, except for the Jones Boys of Calumet Fame.

Laz has won two Kentucky Derbies out of four tries. Plain Ben Jones won six Derbies out of 11 tries. His son, Jimmy, won two out of four. Col. E.R. Bradley’s trainer, Herbert J. Thompson, won four Derbies--but he sent out 24 horses.

Laz, who has been training horses since he was brought up on the old Oriental Park race track in Havana that his grandparents owned and operated--and which Castro turned into an army barracks--is not so concerned for Mister Frisky to be another Bold Forbes as he is for him to be another Affirmed.

You see, not only did Affirmed win the Triple Crown, but Laz considers him to be the greatest race horse of all time. His logic is unassailable. “He is the best horse I ever see and maybe anybody ever see and I will tell you why: None of those other horses--Citation, Secretariat, Man o’War--had to beat what Affirmed had to beat: Alydar. Alydar was a great race horse. If Affirmed wasn’t there, Alydar wins the Triple Crown. And he is recognized as one of the five best horses of all time. And Affirmed beat him every time. Wouldn’t let him by. I don’t know who Citation and Seattle Slew and those horses had to beat, but it wasn’t Alydar.”

The Kentucky Derby is the hardest race in the world to win. But Laz Barrera has already won two. And Mister Frisky probably thinks it’s a piece of cake. Now, winning in Puerto Rico, that’s hard.