King Leatherbury: from Len to Jerry...

[JohnTChance]

The Friday Racing Form has an article about King Leatherbury, which says that he trained for Len Ragozin \"before the sheets even came on the market,\" but that he now \"still uses the ThoroGraph sheets produced by Jerry Brown.\"

Jerry, what can you tell us - if anything - about his transition from Len to you?

JohnTChance

[TGJB]

John-- in the 70\'s Ragozin had claimed and bought a few horses with some success, and used King for a few in Maryland. Friedman tried with a stable that I put up money for that did not do well, then I managed my first stable, using Ragozin, for a guy named Dennis Heard. The first horse we claimed was in Maryland using King, because of the Ragozin connection, and we did a lot with him over a 4 year period as we developed into the third leading stable (by number of wins) in the country. We also brought John Forbes up from Maryland to be our Jersey trainer (he ended up winning something like 16 training titles there), and got Mike Sedlececk, who was at that time living with his parents, to move out and train a string-- he ended up third leading NYRA trainer for the 80\'s.

Anyway, when I left Ragozin those guys basically came with me. King and Mike each had a client who still wanted to use Ragozin, but they recommended to their clients that they use us, and most did. King used us to claim Taking Risks for 20k and won 9 of 10 including a GI, and lots of other good ones.

JBel-- I do remember being interested in Mr. Sword, but that stable doesn\'t usually give them this much time, and we\'ll have to see how the race comes up. Also, that Dutrow thing figures to be in there-- who knows.

[dlf]

Jerry: In \"Picking Winners\", Andy Beyer seems to portray King as a 70s version of a \"move-up\" trainer...any thoughts on this?

[TGJB]

If Andy really implied that it would be pretty surprising, although he wasn\'t that sophisticated early on. King T clearly wasn\'t doing anything when he was dealing with us, and has been one of the guys screaming about it recently.

[davidrex]

     Beyer didn\'t imply \'move-up\' as we interpret it today.
     
     move up back then was making a 12k.claim and moving him up to 18K and winning.

     Drove Ron Alfano crazy...no wonder he was such a boozer...hated king w/passion.

     had vested interst w/my brother on a few that king trained..Do The Bump....She Gone Dagone...King liked Freidman...hated that other guy!

PARTYpokerON!

[dlf]

David: Beyer definitely was implying \"move-up\" as we use it today. The choice of words was my own paraphrasing, not a direct quote. I believe Beyer was mentioning a few trainers whose horses would sometimes \"wake up\" for no apparent reason....he\'s clearly referring to juice, stimulants, etc. Another of the trainers he includes in this group was none other than A.Dutrow Sr! The nut doesn\'t fall far from the tree, apparently. I will bring the book to work tomorrow and provide an exact quote.

Jerry: When you say \"he wasn\'t that sophisticated early on\", do you mean Andy or King?

[TGJB]

I was referring to Andy.

[Delmar Deb]

Alfano...now there\'s a name from the past.

For $10,000 he could get you 3 cheap horses, move them up 3 levels and still make you a profit on ultimately losing them via the claim box...before they broke down.

Funny thing, even with the net profit I still figured that in the longrun, betting would be less expensive than owning...and so much more fun.

[asfufh]

dif, Yes, my recollection is that Beyer was talking about move-up trainers in the contemporary sense. If memory serves, he tells a funny story about Harvey Pack coming down to Maryland to join Beyer and his crew to bet a couple of horses. After betting via his DRF analysis for several races, Harvey learns to throw away the DRF and bet the move-up trainer who\'s turn it is to win the next race no matter what the horses\' DRF history. Asfufh

[davidrex]

     King never spent time w/the animals in his barn...wouldn\'t know one from a harses\' arse!
   
     The sheets wre so powerful back then..leatherbury had all the conspiracy theory guys out witch hunting.

     Jerry you must have been the original titilator guy...people used to talk about us sheet players like we had some ungodlike information eschewed from the devil himself.

     Excuse me for being taken back by someone thinking that Beyer was on to something...he came out and said the Cohens\'(who owned pimlico at the time) neutralized king,delp,dutrow and others by making the inside rock hard.

     Sonny Hine trained for the Cohens\'...now that was a trainer who could juice!

     Always promised myself ..when I get old I\'m not going to harp on the \'old days\'...unfortuneatly my memory only works well in days of yore...its so clear to me now

[dlf]

Here\'s the text, from page 104 of \"Picking Winners\":

Nowhere is an understanding of trainers\' methods more important than in Maryland. During the 1973-74 season there was widespread suspicion that some trainers were using drugs illegally and indiscriminately on their horses, and that racing officials either weren\'t testing for these sophisticated medications or weren\'t enforcing the rules. As a result, the time-honored principles of handicapping seemed almost irrelevant.
Harvey Pack, a horseplayer friend of mine from New York, visited Bowie one Saturday and stopped by the press box to get a few pointers. \"Is speed holding up here?\" he asked. \"Is the rail fast?\" The Maryland regulars chuckled at his naivete. At Bowie, we explained, we don\'t handicap horses. We look for horses trained by Dick Dutrow, King Leatherbury, John Tammaro, and Raymond Lawrence, Jr., and try to guess which ones will be waking up today.

La plus ca change....

[TGJB]

dlf-- that\'s a few years before I got involved with King T, so I can\'t comment directly. But accusations from those who have accurate figures (and know that horses don\'t run the same every time) and those that don\'t are two different things-- there have been a lot of trainers for sheets stables (some of them managed by me) who were accused of moving up horses when they were not.

I never followed the Maryland circuit, but as far as I am concerned there have been suspicious move up trainers for as long as I have been around the game (since the middle 70s).  As far as I can recall they were mostly limited to the claiming ranks. It wasn\'t until the period when Oscar moved up  \"Shifty Sheik\" that it spilled over into the higher ranks of racing. If my memory is correct, that was an exception. That kind of stuff seems much more widespread now.    

There have also always been trainers that managed to get high quality stock and whose success at developing it and spotting it managed to attract even more good stock. That invariably translated into an extraordinary winning record and horses that tended to outperform their figures as they developed. I\'ve been betting lightly raced, well bred, high quality stock from the best barns since I read the Handicapper\'s Handbook by Tom Ainslie back in the \"dark ages\". Horses like that often have more in the tank than their speed figures suggest and trainers like that often move horses like that up when they get them and have a chance to work with them for awhile.

[marcus]

I can\'t say with any kind of certaintcy why Maryland racing has looked anything but special these past several years - it\'s no longer a place where an abundence of pattern play\'s can be found .