Hall of Fame trainer King Leatherbury, 92, passes
Won the fifth most races of all time
Frank Vesp- February 10, 2026
King T. Leatherbury, the legendary Maryland trainer who won more than 6,500 races, revolutionized the claiming game and ultimately achieved Hall of Fame status at age 82, has died. He was 92.
Leatherbury, who won his first race at Sunshine Park, now Tampa Bay Downs, in 1959, earned his 6,508e and eventual victory in his final start of 2022 when Castilleja, a homebreeder of owner Norman Lewis, scored a 17-1 defeat in an allowance match at Parx Racing.
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According to Equibase, Leatherbury won at least one race per year from 1962 through 2022, a remarkable streak of 61 consecutive seasons. He won at least 100 races every year from 1972 through 1997 and won more than 300 in four of those seasons, culminating in a 1976 campaign in which he was almost as reliable as dawn, winning 365 races in that leap year.
Yet the numbers hardly do justice to Leatherbury’s impact on the game.
He was one of the first trainers to use claiming as a way to build a stable. When he started, Leatherbury said, claiming it was “taboo, man.”
“Fifty years ago, if you claimed someone’s horse, they would get mad at you,” he recalled in 2015, telling the story of a rival trainer who was angry about losing a horse through the claims box, adding: “I fooled someone once. He said, ‘You claimed my horse.’ I said, ‘You didn’t know the money was there in the office for you? You got some money there, man. ”
Leatherbury was an expert at putting horses where they belonged, and over his 60-plus year career he won at an 18% loss.
“A horse trainer is like a manager of an athlete, except he’s an animal athlete,” Leatherbury explains. “It’s exactly the same. When you get a prize fighter, you’re going to work on getting him in good shape, keeping him in good physical shape and trying to pick opponents he can beat.”
But he also knew when to shoot.
For example, in November 1993 he claimed Taking Risks for $20,000. He took the Two Punch gelding into benefit company, then into strike company, and finally, nine months later, to victory in the Grade1 Philip Iselin Handicap at Monmouth Park, which he won by almost eight lengths.
That was one of two Grade 1 wins that Leatherbury recorded. The other came in the 1987 Hampstead Handicap with Catatonic.
Leatherbury was also one of the first trainers to have separate series of horses managed by trusted assistants. That gave him the freedom to focus on managing owners, acquiring new horses and placing them smartly.
Although that approach seems anything but new now, it represented a revolution in horsemanship at the time and, among other things, earned him the John W. Galbreath Award for Outstanding Entrepreneurship in the Equine Industry from the University of Louisville.
“King Leatherbury’s long-term approach to running his business was innovative in applying business school insights to his training profession and his racing stable management,” program director Rich Wilcke said at the time.
During his heyday, Leatherbury bumped into the other three members of Maryland’s legendary Big Four coaches, Grover “Bud” Delp, John Tammarro and Dick Dutrow. While the others went (or tried to go) elsewhere in search of greener pastures, Leatherbury remained in Maryland throughout his career, enjoying the Daily racing form columnist who described him as “as Maryland as crab cakes.”
However, that may have hurt his candidacy for the Hall of Fame.
“Unless you’re in New York or California or on the Derby trail every year, you don’t get that kind of recognition here in Maryland,” another successful Maryland trainer, Larry Murray, once said. “You know, he just grinds out races.”
Delp received Hall of Fame recognition in 2002 based on a stellar career and “the greatest horse to ever look through a bridle,” the all-time Spectacular Bid.
It took another thirteen years and, oddly enough, a few closely related homebred stars before Leatherbury joined his former rival in Saratoga Springs.
Ah Day, by Malibu Moon, out of the Thirty Eight Paces mare Endette, arrived in 2005 and went on to win 14 races, including a Grade 3, and earn more than $900,000.
In 2010, Ben’s Cat arrived, a son of Malibu Moon’s half-brother Parker’s Storm Cat and out of Endette’s full sister Two Fox. He became one of the most popular Maryland-bred and established stars in generations, winning 32 races, four of them qualifying, and earning more than $2.6 million.
“Ah, Day came first, then Ben,” said Avon Thorpe, who was Leatherbury’s top assistant during those years and worked in the Leatherbury operation for about 3,600 victories, he estimated. “Ah Day came first, and we were on the scene, and he was just winning and winning and winning. And when he started to decline, Ben’s Cat showed up at just the perfect time. And then he started winning.”
“One of my problems is that I take too much for granted,” Leatherbury said of Ben’s Cat in 2014. “This horse is a super horse and I hope I really appreciate him as I should. He is so special.”
A renowned storyteller with a keen sense of humor, Leatherbury’s strength was providing both the spoonful of sugar and the medicine in an instant.
“My age is holding me back now,” he said in 2015, “because if a young guy wants to get into the business, he’s going to go to an up-and-coming young trainer. He’ll think, ‘Leatherbury is going to drop dead on me.'”
Leatherbury is survived by his wife Linda and sons Todd and Taylor. Funeral arrangements are pending.
Also in Leatherbury’s Hall of Fame class was Xtra Heat, the fleet filly based at Laurel Park and trained by John Salzman, Sr. for himself and co-owner Kenny Taylor.
“I’m a kid from the 1970s, coming here and watching his horses run,” Taylor said in amazement at the time. “And you’re going to the Hall of Fame with him? That’s not possible. I’m going to the Hall of Fame with King T. Leatherbury. Do you understand that? Do you know what that means?”
“He’s the best,” added longtime assistant Avon Thorpe. “His name is King for a reason.”
KING T. LEATHERBURY FILE
- BORN March 26, 1933, in Baltimore, MD
- DIE February 10, 2026, in Mitchellville, MD
- CAREER STATISTICS (start-1st-2nd-3rd-revenues) 36,256-6,508-5,289-4,645-$64,693,537
- CAREER HIGHLIGHTS 52 training titles at Laurel Park and Pimlico… 4 straight 300-win campaigns, 11 straight over 200, led the nation in wins in 1977 and 1978… Recorded a six-win day and four five-win days… Ranks fifth among trainers in all-time wins… Recorded his first win in 1959 at Sunshine Park (now Tampa Bay Downs)… Recorded overall victory in penultimate start of his career… Saddled four Preakness starters, including Thirty Eight Paces (1981) and I Am The Game (1985), both of which finished fourth… The notable runner of the 1970s and 1980s trained at Port Conway Lane intermittently throughout his career, while that runner recorded 52 wins from 242 career starts… Recorded Grade 1 wins with Catatonic (1987 Hempstead) and Taking Risks (1994 Iselin)… Honored with a breed named after him (King T. Leatherbury Stakes) and for his wildly popular homebred Ben’s Cat…
- TOP RUNNERS
- Taking risks
- Catatonic
- I am the game
- Ben’s cat
- Oh bye
- Indigo star
- Thirty-eight steps
- Malibu Moonshine
- Ameri Valay
- Jake learned
- Dynamic trick
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