Fast track to finding a cure
A horse named Call Me Larry is running to help defeat breast cancer.
By DAVE SCHEIBER
Published April 11, 2007
Call Me Larry. The name sounds far more like a television sitcom than a thoroughbred with a socially conscious story line in the realm of women's health and a fast-growing national buzz.
But in the battle against breast cancer, Call Me Larry - New York bred and Ocala trained - is running with a true sense of mission in his rookie season.
It is a horse with quite a tale.
It entwines his home, Find A Cure Stable at Belmont Park in New York, and an unusual alliance of partners - a stallion manager, a governor's wife, a cosmetics executive and a renowned cancer researcher - brought together for the cause by a series of serendipitous circumstances.
And then there's Call Me Larry, a 4-year-old gelding who displays on his racing silks the pink ribbon symbol for breast cancer awareness and generates 10 percent of his earnings toward research of the disease.
"Everybody flips over horses, so I was thinking how great it would be for a beautiful creature that people love to carry the banner and raise some money to fight breast cancer," said Call Me Larry's owner, Suzie O'Cain, who raises horses on a farm in upstate New York.
Judging by his performances so far, Call Me Larry could be quite a fundraiser. In his debut Feb. 10 at Aqueduct, he galloped from far back in the pack to finish second, beaten by three-quarters of a length. And on March 10, the impressive newcomer rallied again, making a run for the lead on the turn and posting a one-length victory.
"He is still playing around a little bit, but he's got nowhere to go but up," said trainer Leah Gyarmati after the race. "... This is such a great cause. And Suzie has done such a great job of pulling everyone together."
O'Cain may be the key name in the mix, but the name everyone wants to know about is Call Me Larry. How he got it says a lot about O'Cain - her determination, and her insistence on being deferential to a doctor.
Name dropper
It's a long, winding story, starting at the New York governor's mansion a decade ago.
O'Cain became a good friend of Libby Pataki, wife of then-Gov. George Pataki and founder of a Women In Racing organization in 1996.
Pataki, who had lost her mother to breast cancer, introduced O'Cain four years ago to Evelyn Lauder. The daughter-in-law of cosmetics magnate Estee Lauder, she founded the Breast Cancer Research Foundation in 1993, creating the pink ribbon as part of the campaign.
Lauder staged her first breast cancer awareness luncheon at nearby Saratoga Race Course in 2003 - the same year O'Cain started doing her own Women In Racing segment on an Off Track Betting show called A.M. Saratoga. O'Cain helped out with logistics for Lauder's event, just as she did a year later at the second annual luncheon.
The special guest that year was a pre-eminent researcher in the fight against breast cancer, Dr. Larry Norton, a deputy physician-in-chief at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Hospital in Manhattan.
O'Cain had Norton and Evelyn Lauder on her TV show. When she reached out to shake his hand, she naturally addressed him as Dr. Norton.
"He says, 'Call me Larry,' " O'Cain recalled. "But I've read his resume and that's the last thing I think I should be calling him. Maybe your highness, or your exalted one. But not Larry."
After the show, the three drove to the luncheon at Saratoga, where Norton spoke and conducted a Q&A session. Every so often, O'Cain addressed him as Dr. Norton and each time he corrected her:
"Call me Larry."
Finally, when the luncheon ended, she slipped again and the doctor admonished her, "CALL ME LARRY."
"And right there, I told him, 'Okay, Larry, I have a 2-year-old race horse in Florida I haven't named yet,' " O'Cain said, chuckling, " 'and I'm naming him Call Me Larry.' "
Running with purpose
Soon after, she applied for a new stable name and the new pink-ribbon silks. She also came up with the plan of donating 10 percent of her horse's earnings to the Breast Cancer Research Foundation to support the work of Norton and others.
But there was a hitch in the plans, caused by a hitch in Call Me Larry's gait. He seemed to have a persistent soreness in his right hind quarters.
"I was in charge of his breaking as a yearling and he was a big, good-looking colt," said Bob Noble of Ocala Stud. "Everything about him was very nice, except for that soreness. He got better after a few months, but then it came back when he started galloping out of the starting gate."
Call Me Larry went north to O'Cain's Highcliff Farms in Delanson, N.Y. She and her veterinarian husband, Doc O'Cain, were concerned. They put the horse through extensive testing, even taking him to Cornell University where he underwent nuclear scans. Still, there was no answer to the mystery.
So they took their horse out of commission. Some nine months passed, during which time they returned him to Ocala. "The funny thing is, we never saw that problem again," Noble said. "And he trained very well. So we sent him back to New York."
Working with Gyarmati - a former theology student who became a jockey and then a trainer - Call Me Larry has been taking Aqueduct by storm.
"After his first race," O'Cain said, "my husband and I were leaving the paddock and all the gamblers were stopping us and saying, 'We bet on your horse. We really wanted him to win.' "
Even jockey C.C. Lopez felt a special connection to Call Me Larry, who made a monster move at the eighth pole in February. "When we made that move, all I could think about was the pink ribbon," he said after the race.
O'Cain's vision is to make it possible for other owners to race anywhere in the country under the Find A Cure Stables silks, generating a wave of donations. In New York, rules currently make that impossible without the horse changing ownership.
She said regulations may make it easier to pull off in such states as Florida, Kentucky and California. "I would like to change the regulations in every state so horses can run for breast cancer research at any time," she said.
O'Cain plans to race Call Me Larry in the coming weeks, though no firm date has been set. Meanwhile, donations can be made in Call Me Larry's name via the Breast Cancer Research Foundation bcrfcure.org.
Norton was unable to be at the track for his namesake's win. He was attending a cancer symposium with fellow doctors.
"I would bet that most of those people at the symposium are not horse racing fans," O'Cain said.
But Norton and dozens of distinguished colleagues found themselves checking for Aqueduct results all afternoon. When news hit that the horse had won the sixth race, the room erupted in cheers and applause.
"Larry told me he was really proud to be the doctor version of the horse," O'Cain said. "He e-mailed me later to say that he'd never been to the races, but he'd be there next time. And he wrote one thing that has stuck with me - that he really thought Call Me Larry was running with angels."
Indeed, Norton said he now plans to be a regular at the track whenever the special horse races.
"Because Call Me Larry is not only a great horse, he is a great symbol," he said. "And every time he runs, he runs for all of us."