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Ben’s Cat, Mountain Dew Elected to Maryland Thoroughbred HOF

The legendary 26-time stakes winner and fan favorite Ben's Cat and star foxhunter Mountain Dew are the newest inductees into the Maryland-Bred Thoroughbred Hall of Fame after a vote by a committee of Maryland racing industry members coordinated by the Maryland Horse Breeders Association and Maryland Racing Media Association.

A son of Parker's Storm Cat, Ben's Cat did not debut until his 4-year-old season after breaking his pelvis at two, an injury that required six months of stall rest. He won his first two career starts in claiming company and his first eight overall for owner, breeder and trainer King T. Leatherbury, including the first three of those black-type victories. He won the Maryland-bred Mister Diz S. a half-dozen times from eight starts in the race, the Jim McKay Turf Sprint on five occasions and the Maryland Million Turf Sprint H. three times. He was a graded-stakes winner each year from 2011-2014, all in turf sprints at Parx Racing. In 2017, he was awarded the Secretariat Vox Populi Award, chosen by voters from around the world.

Janon Fisher, Jr.'s Mountain Dew was a star foxhunter before switching to timber racing in the early 1960s. He won the Maryland Hunt Cup three times (1962, 1965 and 1967) with rider Janon Fisher III and was runner-up in 1963, 1964 and 1966. He was injured at the 19th of 22 fences in the 1968 Hunt Cup when leading and remarkably continued to jump fence 20 while being pulled up. Mountain Dew competed in 24 sanctioned timber races and never fell. He was injured in a single start on the flat as a 3-year-old.

“We are so proud that, with this year's inductees, we are able to celebrate not only two of our most important Maryland-bred horses, but Maryland's remarkable horsemen and the diversity of our sport that they represent,” said Cricket Goodall, executive director of the Maryland Horse Breeders Association. “King T. Leatherbury and the Fisher family are great examples of the persistence and longevity that Maryland is known for.”

This year's inductees will be celebrated during a ceremony between races at Timonium Race Course Saturday, Sept. 2.

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Jockey Julian Pimentel Taking A Break To Contemplate His Future

Journeyman Julian Pimentel, a Maryland mainstay since 2006 that will be forever linked as the regular rider of late Mid-Atlantic legend Ben's Cat, is taking the winter off to contemplate his future.

Pimentel, 40, finished sixth aboard Norman Lewis' 4-year-old filly Castilleja for Hall of Fame trainer King Leatherbury in Saturday's opener at Laurel Park in Laurel, Md., a six-furlong starter-optional claimer for fillies and mares 3 years old and up.

According to Equibase statistics, it was the 101st mount of the fall meet for Pimentel, 302nd of the year, and 11,299th in a career that began in his native Colombia before coming to the United States in 2000 and working as an exercise rider for Hall of Fame trainer Bill Mott. He first rode in New Jersey before making the move to Maryland.

“I've been fighting with my weight a little bit lately, so I'm going to go home to relax, spend time with family and not think about it and when I come back, I'll see what happens,” Pimentel said. “This is all I've been doing all my life.

“I've never done anything else. I have fun, but it's hard to do. Everything has to come to an end,” he added. “I'm definitely coming back, I just don't know if I'm going to ride again. I don't know exactly what I'd do.”

Pimentel has 11 wins at the fall meet, 42 this year, and 1,806 in a career that included eight Grade 3 wins and mounts in the 2019 G1 Kentucky Derby and 2011, 2014, and 2019 G1 Preakness. His victory in the 2017 G3 General George at Laurel was the first graded-stakes victory for Imperial Hint, who would go on to win four Grade 1 stakes and more than $2.2 million in purses.

Ben's Cat was, by far, Pimentel's greatest horse. Pimentel was aboard for 41 of 63 starts including 30 in a row from June 2012 to November 2015. Together they won 22 races, 17 of them in stakes, topped by the 2013 and 2014 G3 Parx Dash, 2012 G3 Turf Monster, 2012 Maryland Million Turf Sprint, 2013-15 Mister Diz and Jim McKay Turf Sprint, and 2012-14 Fabulous Strike Handicap. Ben's Cat was euthanized at age 11 in June 2017 due to complications from colic surgery.

“Ben's Cat was very important to me, a very good horse,” Pimentel said. “When we went to the Derby, that was great. There were a lot of good times.”

Ronnie Gerardo, Pimentel's agent since February 2009, said the jockey is leaving Tuesday for Colombia and expected to return following Laurel's 2022 winter meet, which runs through March 27.

“This may be his last mount. He's going home to give his body a break and around April, he'll see how he is and if he feels like he can go back down to 118 [pounds] again,” Gerardo said. “He's competitive. It's a little harder these days. The older you get, your metabolism slows down. He's done a good job taking care of his body. He's had a good career.”

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Gerardo said Pimentel first began thinking about taking a sabbatical when Maryland racing was paused from mid-March to late May 2020 amid the coronavirus pandemic. Pimentel had single-season highs of 1,039 mounts and $4,387,978 million in purse earnings in 2001 and 146 wins in 2011, when he also won his 1,000th race aboard Pet Me Pet Me at Delaware Park.

“He's leaning toward retirement. It all depends on his weight,” Gerardo said. “I'm praying that he'll be back because I'm going to miss him. We've been together for almost 13 years. It's a long time, especially in this game.”

Other graded-stakes winners for Pimentel are Divisidero, Control System, Evil Minister, and Runspastum. He ranks fifth with 13 career wins in the Maryland Million, five behind Hall of Fame leader Edgar Prado.

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Valued Notion Wins Stakes Debut In Ben’s Cat

Valued Notion made his stakes debut a memorable one for owner Hillwood Stable LLC and trainer Rodney Jenkins when he led gate-to-wire under jockey Xavier Perez to win the $75,000 Ben's Cat by two lengths over Air Token. Oldies But Goodies checked in third while favored Hemp, who broke slowly, finished fourth.

Valued Notion, a lightly raced 4-year-old gelded son of Great Notion, covered the 5 furlongs in :58.19 over the main track after the races were taken off the turf.

Breaking from post 10, Valued Notion broke out of the gate quickly and was chased from the outside by longshot Xmasinthecity past an opening quarter in :22.22 and a half in :45.47. But entering the stretch, Perez put away Xmasinthecity and held off the remainder of his opponents.

“He was in contention right away. I was just trying to let the 12 [Xmasinthecity] go ahead of me,” Perez said. “I watched a couple of his races and he kind of slowed down at the end. As soon as I put my horse against the bit, he took me to the front and I just cruised. He was doing it so comfortable and I just let him do it himself until we got to the top of the lane.”

Valued Notion, who broke his maiden at third asking in February, followed up that victory with an allowance victory before finishing a tired fourth in his last start April 9.

Bred, owned and trained by Hall of Fame horseman King Leatherbury, Ben's Cat won 32 of 63 career races, 26 stakes, and more than $2.6 million in purses from 2010 to 2017. A four-time Maryland-bred Horse of the Year, Ben's Cat died July 18, 2017 from complications following colic surgery.

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Still Plugging Away, Leatherbury Wins Race for 62nd Consecutive Year

Now 87, trainer King Leatherbury likes to tell a joke, the one about his destiny and his family’s burial plot.

“I feel perfectly good and healthy but when I visit my family plot down there, where my whole family has been buried, there’s this little sign. It says, ‘King Leatherbury, coming soon.'”

In the meantime, Leatherbury is not done yet or ready to walk away from a career that has earned him a spot in the Hall of Fame and fifth place on the list of all-time winningest trainers with 6,504 victories. He reached another milestone Friday night at Penn National when wining a $10,000 claimer with Paratycachaca (Jazil). In a streak that began way back in 1959 at Sunshine Park (now Tampa Bay Downs), he has now won a race for 62 straight years. It was his first win in over 10 months.

“That sounds great because it’s so many years. I didn’t even realize it had been that many years,” he said. “I saddled my first winner in 1959 and here it is 2020.”

But 2020 has been a difficult year for him. Having the sort of stable that struggles to win even one race in a year is something he will never get used to, not when he has won numerous training titles and has won as many as 365 races in a single year. He understands why: there aren’t many owners willing to hire someone his age.

“I’m 87 years old, for God’s sake. Nobody is going to give me horses,” he said.

Up until 2017, Leatherbury didn’t necessarily need a large stable to enjoy success. He was the owner and trainer of Ben’s Cat (Parker’s Storm Cat), the obscurely bred turf sprinter who won 26 stakes races and earned 2,643,782. But when Ben’s Cat was retired after just three starts in 2017, Leatherbury didn’t have anything to fill the void. He won just eight races in 2018, the first time in his career that his win total was in the single digits, and only two in 2019. This year, he is 1 for 19.

“Winning one race in one year is nothing to brag about at all,” he said. “Fact is, I am down to four horses and one of them is a young horse who is not ready yet. So I have three horses running and they are all turf horses, which restricts their ability to start because you get a lot of times when it rains and the races come off the turf. That’s the predicament I am in. I’m happy to have won that race, but winning just one race doesn’t mean anything.”

When Leatherbury was among the leading trainers in the country in the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s, he had no problem attracting owners. With Leatherbury among the best there was at playing the claiming game, his owners knew that their trainer would win races for them.

“I have had great owners in my career and have great stories about them,” he said. “They were wonderful people. They just died off. Generally, the owner is older than the trainer. I had Mr. (Woodrow) Marriott who bred horses and I always got eight to 10 from him. He lived to be 93 years old, but sooner or later you go. I had my own horses for as long as I could. Generally, if you own a horse you lose money. If you don’t you are extremely lucky.”

He is down to one owner, Norman Lewis.

“Last year as the year was coming to an end, he said, ‘King, what is your plan for next year?’ meaning whether I was going to retire or not. I said to him that since he was the only owner that I have it all depended on what he was going to do. He stuck it out. He is a breeder. When you train for breeders you don’t win as many races as you do when training for claiming outfits. A breeder gets very attached to his horses and has sentimental interest in them. You can’t manage them as aggressively. You don’t have the ability to drop them and lose them.”

Leatherbury doesn’t want to retire. Like many other trainers who have spent most of their adult lives doing just one thing, he can’t imagine not training horses.

“I don’t want to retire because this has been my life,” he said.” I love it. If I retired, what else would I do?”

But he understands that if Lewis gets out of the business he could find himself without any horses to train.

“I don’t want to retire but I might be forced to if I lose this one owner,” he said. “Then I’ll just throw the towel in. When it comes that time, I’ll have to face the facts.”

But he’s not ready for that day to arrive. As long as he has horses to train he will keep doing what he’s been doing for 62 years and look forward to his next winner.

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