Ben's Cat wins Turf Monster

KING T. Leatherbury used to win 350 races a year in a training career that began in 1959. Now, the Maryland-based horse racing legend, 79, is down to just a few horses.

After all those years, there was King T., sitting in the Parx Racing owners' boxes Monday afternoon, watching Ben's Cat start to lengthen his stride with 200 yards to go in the $350,000 Turf Monster Handicap.

It really did not look like Ben would get there. There simply did not look like he had enough time. With Ben, there is always time. And when the 6-year-old got up to win by a head, Leatherbury won race No. 6,349 (third all time) and after all the horses he has sent to the post, the man had his first $1 million horse.

"Did he win it?" King wanted to know as he asked for the way to the winner's circle. Of course, he won it. Go get your picture taken.

It is one of the sport's enduring mysteries how Leatherbury is not in the Racing Hall of Fame. Yes, he has dealt almost exclusively with claiming horses. But that's what he had. And he won all those races. Now, after all that time, he is training his horse of a lifetime.

Ben's Cat sustained a broken pelvis before he raced. The trainer was not sure he would ever get to the races, much less win a race. He won his first eight. And he's still winning.

The first time Ben's Cat got beat, he took the normal turn in the stable area to where winning horses are tested. Even the horse could not believe he had lost.

Ben's Cat won the Turf Monster for the second consecutive year, edging out Chamberlain Bridge who won the race in 2009 and 2010. The rain finally let up an hour before the stakes portion of the Parx card (featuring $900,000 in stakes purses and nearly $1.3 million overall), but the grass course was so soft that Ben, favored at 9-5, ran the 5 furlongs in 1:00.62, more than 3 seconds slower than his winning time in 2011. Jeremy Rose guided Ben home then, Julian Pimentel Monday.

The jockey seems almost irrelevant. Some horses just know where the wire is. Ben won his 17th race and 12th stakes race. The horse has now earned $1,161,090. The Turf Monster is a Breeders' Cup "Win and You're In" race, but Ben is not BC nominated so it would still cost King, who also owns the horse, $100,000 to supplement. He did not do it last year and does not seem inclined to do it this year.

"People say 'well, he won a million dollars,' " Leatherbury said. "My answer is 'where did that million dollars go?' I don't know where it is. All I know is that every time I win purses, I pay a lot of bills."

Leatherbury does not nominate any of his horses to the Breeders' Cup because "the kind of horses I breed, what chance have I got to have one of the best horses in the country. It didn't make sense to do."

It really didn't make sense. Neither, of course, does Ben's Cat, a horse by a $2,000 sire, a horse that really should not be winning all these races, a horse that if there were any justice in this game, would be King T. Leatherbury's ticket to the Hall of Fame.

"It doesn't bother me," Leatherbury said. "I've had my 15 minutes a million times."

Now, he has a million-dollar horse.

Last year, Kendrick Carmouche became the first jockey in Parx history to take down four consecutive riding titles. He has been riding at Monmouth Park this summer so he is not going to defend the title. But when Nick Zito needed a rider for Easter Gift in the co-featured Smarty Jones Stakes, he called Carmouche.

And the man who knows the track as well as anybody just waited behind the dueling leaders, favored Teeth of the Dog and second-choice Traffic Light, until he felt it was time to turn up the pressure. When he did, Easter Gift got up to the leaders on the far turn and then ran away from them in the stretch, winning by 4 1/2 lengths and running the mile and 70 yards over a very sloppy track in 1:42.05.

"[Zito] told me if I could get him relaxed and sit behind horses, he said he should be the best horse," Carmouche said.

Zito did not tell Carmouche if he planned to run Easter Gift back in the Sept. 22 Pennsylvania Derby.

"He just told me to make sure I win and wave at the camera," Carmouche said.

After the race, Zito said it is unlikely Easter Gift would try the stronger field coming for the Pa. Derby.

Traffic Light finished second, with Teeth of the Dog third. Teeth of the Dog had to be taken off the track in a van.

"He's pretty lame in the left front," trainer Michael Matz said. "He had a cut on his left hind [leg]. The way he walks, it looks like it might be a knee [injury], but there's nothing we can do now until we X-ray it [Tuesday]."