People often have a similar story that explains how they got into the game. Perhaps parents took them to the track as children, or maybe a relative taught them to bet and an early win turned into an obsession. Frederick Larsen’s story is unlike any other, an emotional roller coaster that now has him poised to make a big impact on racing in California.
In the late 1990s, Larsen’s parents bought a farm in Phoenix, Ariz., with the idea of getting into the breeding and racing business. Larsen was living in Los Angeles, so they gave him ownership of one foal, who went on to break its maiden at Turf Paradise.
“I fell in love with it,” Larsen recalled. “I was always chasing that next win.”
When his mother suffered a massive stroke in 2009, Larsen dropped everything and stepped in to take over the family horse business.
“My dad was always out of town working, and my mother was the one talking to the trainers and aware of where all the horses were,” Larsen said. “It was all in her head.”
Larsen had a tough job simply tracking down the location of all the horses. He found it too much to handle, so he downsized from nearly 50 horses to just one.
“I kept the first horse that they bred, just one mare,” he said. “She had a Giant’s Causeway colt that we named after my mom before she passed away in 2012.”
Understandably, an electric charge of emotion and high hopes were riding on the colt. He was in training in California when he broke down in his final workout before debuting and had to be euthanized. Larsen, rattled from witnessing the incident, walked away from the sport.
“Knowing how much connection that horse had with my mom, I couldn’t do it,” he said. “That was the last horse she ever saw being born before she died.”
Larsen, a single father of two, went about his regular life away from the game until 2019, when he went into the hospital for a suspected kidney stone. “It was a misdiagnosis,” he said. “I coded on the table in the operating room, and the only thing I knew was that two weeks later I woke up on a ventilator. Being kept awake on a ventilator is very scary. You don’t want that feeling, so they kept sedating me.” While under the sedation, Larsen began to have dreams or visions of the horse business.
“I felt like my mom was there, showing me a farm, and then showing me horses,” he said. “When I was getting moved out of the ICU, all I could think about was getting back into the horse business.”
What should have been an exciting venture for Larsen quickly turned again. He picked up a Noble Mission filly and a Quality Road colt early in 2020, and then the pandemic hit.
“I had to take a step back,” he said. “I was analyzing a lot of stuff, and realized it gave me time to get a good broodmare band going, as well as find my own stallion. I could go full force with what I really want to do, which is breed my own mares to my own stallion.”
Millionaire Oscar Nominated is a graded stakes-winning full brother to Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Turf winner Oscar Performance
Larsen now has two stallions, led by $1,502,639 earner Oscar Nominated, a son of Kitten’s Joy—Devine Actress, by Theatrical. The full brother to Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Turf (G1T) winner Oscar Performance was difficult to obtain because owners Ken and Sarah Ramsey wanted to stand the three-time graded winner in Kentucky.
“They had high hopes for him as a stallion,” Larsen said. “He would have fit in New York, too, but I really want to support the California small breeders. I know at one time I didn’t have the money to afford something good, so I want to offer smaller breeders a stallion that could have been a Kentucky stallion for a good price.”
Although he was urged to go to a $7,500 stud fee for Oscar Nominated, Larsen settled on just $2,500. “That’s a good price point,” he said. “I want to help breeders and support the CTBA. I think a horse like this gives them a chance to compete at the highest level.” Larsen’s other stallion, the Argentine-bred King of Jazz, was a two-time winner on the grass at Santa Anita. He is a son of Giant’s Causeway out of the Lode mare Kiss Me Sweet, and he has 25% winners from starters.
King of Jazz, an Argentine-bred son of Giant’s Causeway, is one of Frederick Larsen’s two stallions
“I’m realistic,” Larsen said. “Not every horse is a Kentucky Derby winner. I live by the motto ‘persistence breaks resistance.’ I’m very persistent; some people call me a hustler. But I work hard for what I have.”
What he has is a burgeoning broodmare band and several strong prospects on the track.
“I have a colt on the track named Producer Credit, who is a Mizzen Mast out of a Tapit mare,” Larsen said. “I have unraced Quality Road and Gemologist colts at the track. Then I have mares in Kentucky who are in foal to Distorted Humor, Vino Rosso, Vekoma, and Karakontie. They will all come here to California to foal and be bred back to Oscar Nominated.”
Larsen’s Sir Frederick Stables would not be possible without the relationship he has with the people at BG Thoroughbred Farm, where King of Jazz and Oscar Nominated stand.
“Marcos (Menjivar) is awesome, I respect George Yager, and Hector Palma knows everything there is about horses,” said Larsen. “I have a great relationship with all of them, and while I’m not the most knowledgeable, I learn very quickly and I don’t feel like they would ever take advantage of me.”
Larsen’s goal is to be climbing the ranks of top owners and breeders in California over the next five years. But he would not have made it this far without his children.
“They’ve seen my struggles,” he said of his 19-year-old son and 17-year-old daughter. “They were close to their grandma, so they know what this means to me. Without their support, I wouldn’t have gotten back in the sport.”