Legendary Maryland Trainer Leatherbury Dies at 92

The Maryland Jockey Club mourns the passing of legendary Hall of Fame trainer King Leatherbury, who died at his home Tuesday morning. He was 92.

"He's one of a kind," said one of his twin sons, Taylor Leatherbury. "There's never been a man more appropriately named than my father."

Born in Shady Side, Maryland, on March 26, 1933, Leatherbury earned his trainer's license in 1958 and won his first race the following year with a horse named Mister L at Florida's Sunshine Park. That victory launched a remarkable career spanning more than six decades. 

Leatherbury's horses won 6,508 races, earning $64,693,537. He captured 52 training titles in Maryland, 26 each at Pimlico Race Course and Laurel Park, and four meet championships at Delaware Park.

Leatherbury led all North American trainers in wins in 1977 and 1978, and won 300 or more races each year from 1975 to 1978.

He secured at least 200 victories annually for 11 consecutive years and had 100 or more winners for 26 straight years. Leatherbury ranked among the top three in North American wins annually from 1975 to 1980 and was among the top 10 nationally in earnings four times.

"The first couple of years I trained horses, I was racing at places like Sunshine Park (Florida), Scarborough Downs (Maine) and Thistledown (Ohio)," Leatherbury told Tom Atwell in the May 23, 1993, Daily Racing Form. "I had absolutely no idea who the leading trainer was. I was just struggling to see if I could get one win. I don't even remember if they had a leading trainer's list back in those days. But as soon as I reached the point where Bud Delp and I became competitive here in Maryland, winning became very important to me."

Leatherbury stabled his horses, appropriately enough, in Barn Number 1 at Laurel Park. He was one of the "Big Four" of Maryland racing, along with fellow trainers Delp, Dick Dutrow Sr., and John Tammaro, who dominated the Maryland standings in the 1970s.

"Nobody in the history of racing … has done what he's done the last 25 years: that being training the horses from speed figures, the Racing Form, using top assistants and veterinarians," Delp told turf writer Vinnie Perrone in the May 20, 1993, edition of The Washington Post. "Believe me, King Leatherbury can train any racehorse that ever lived, and train him to perfection."

In the same article, Perrone said that Leatherbury, also known as the "King of the Claimers," achieved success "predominantly with claiming horses, using guile, prescience and statistics to buy and sell Thoroughbreds in the cheaper, unpublicized races. In essence, he's one of the sport's great livestock traders."

Upon his retirement in 2023, he was the third trainer in history to win 6,000 races.

"I don't know how it happened," Leatherbury said on the occasion of his 6,000th win, Cherokee Sunrise, at the State Fair in Timonium. "The wins just added up over the years. It is amazing to think that only two others in history (Dale Baird and Jack Van Berg) have won more races. I am honored to be in their company."

The late Jack Mann, a member of the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame's Joe Hirsch Media Roll of Honor, wrote this about Leatherbury in Mid-Atlantic Thoroughbred in 1993.

"Being King Leatherbury is never, ever having to wish you were anybody else, doing anything else that anybody, anywhere, does. Being a horse trainer, Leatherbury's way, is doing everything that's fun about racing, just about all the time, and not doing most of what isn't fun."

Among Leatherbury's top horses were Catatonic, winner of the grade 1 Hempstead Stakes at Belmont Park in 1987, and Taking Risks, winner of the grade 1 Philip H. Iselin Handicap at Monmouth Park in 1994.

His most popular runner, however, was Ben's Cat, a homebred owned and trained by Leatherbury. Ben's Cat won 25 stakes races and earned more than $2.6 million.

Leatherbury was inducted into the National Museum of Racing's Hall of Fame in 2015. He is also a member of the Anne Arundel County Hall of Fame and received a lifetime achievement award from the Maryland Athletic Hall of Fame in 2002. He served as president of both the Maryland Horse Breeders' Association and Maryland Million Ltd., and served on the board of directors at Timonium.

Laurel Park honors Leatherbury annually with the King T. Leatherbury Stakes for 3-year-olds and up at 5 1/2 furlongs on turf. The 2026 edition will be held on Saturday, April 18.

Raised on a farm in Anne Arundel County, Leatherbury graduated from the University of Maryland with a degree in Business Administration.

He is survived by his wife of 62 years, Linda Marie Heavener Leatherbury, 82; twin sons, Taylor and Todd, 58; and grandson Heavener, 18.