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Authors Kelly, Ours Go Live Friday To Relive Man O’ War, Sir Barton Match Race

Authors Jennifer Kelly and Dorothy Ours will discuss the 100th anniversary of Man o' War's victory against Sir Barton in the 1920 Kenilworth Gold Cup in an online program hosted by the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame on Friday, Oct. 9 at 11 a.m. The program will be moderated by Brien Bouyea, the Museum's Hall of Fame and Communications Director. The event can be accessed for free at:

https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_ymPg1E1gQ3W66AS3T0nNRg

On Oct. 12, 1920, Man o' War defeated Sir Barton by seven lengths at Kenilworth Park in Canada to earn $75,000 (a record purse for a single race at the time) and a gold cup crafted by Tiffany and Co., valued at $5,000. It was the final race Man o' War competed in, concluding his career with 20 wins from 21 starts and record earnings of $249,465. Man o' War was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1957.

Sir Barton was America's first Triple Crown winner in 1919. He raced three more times without a victory after his loss to Man o' War and was retired with 13 wins from 31 starts and earnings of $116,857. He joined Man o' War in the 1957 Hall of Fame class.

Kelly and Ours are experts on the careers of Sir Barton and Man o' War, respectively. Kelly is the author of Sir Barton and the Making of the Triple Crown, while Ours is the author of Man o' War: A Legend Like Lightning.

Kelly fell in love with horse racing when she read Walter Farley's Black Stallion series as a child and then watched the filly Winning Colors beat the boys in the 1988 Kentucky Derby. A lifelong reader and writer, she took her love of the written word to the classroom, teaching both first-year composition and technical writing for more than a decade. She then embarked on a multi-year journey to write Sir Barton and the Making of the Triple Crown, the first book to chronicle the life and career of America's first Triple Crown winner. Kelly is working on her follow-up to Sir Barton, Foxes of Belair, an exploration of the lives and careers of Gallant Fox and Omaha, America's second and third Triple Crown winners.

Ours is a history-loving lifelong horse and racing enthusiast. She worked for several years at the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame and has written two books featuring Hall of Fame horses. Each has been honored as a finalist for the Dr. Tony Ryan Book Award. Man o' War: A Legend Like Lightning digs for the actual — and truly phenomenal — individual who became a myth. Battleship: A Daring Heiress, A Teenage Jockey, and America's Horse tells a story that sounds unreal: a 15.2-hand, 11-year-old stallion and a 6-foot-1, 17-year-old boy teaming up to win the world's top steeplechase. Ours also freelanced for Thoroughbred Times and served twice as a John H. Daniels Research Fellow at the National Sporting Library & Museum in Middleburg, Va. She's currently working on a third book.

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‘No Excuses’: Baffert-Trained Authentic, Thousand Words Both In Good Shape For Preakness

After his Preakness (G1) horses went to the track at Pimlico Race Course for their exercise Thursday morning, Hall of Fame trainer Bob Baffert joked about the schedule for the days ahead.

“We gallop tomorrow and then we start fretting,” he said with a chuckle, emphasizing the last word as “fret-innn.”

Though he will worry, Baffert has a strong hand to play in the 145th Preakness Saturday: Authentic, who won the Kentucky Derby (G1) at Churchill Downs Sept. 5, and Thousand Words, who has won three stakes in California. Authentic will have Hall of Fame jockey John Velazquez up when the 9-5 morning-line favorite breaks from Post No. 9. Thousand Words, winner of his most recent start, the Aug. 1 Shared Belief at Del Mar, is 6-1 in the morning line and will leave from Post No. 5 under Florent Geroux.

Authentic, owned by Spendthrift Farm LLC, MyRaceHorse Stable, Madaket Stables LLC and Starlight Racing, galloped 1 ½ miles Thursday under Humberto Gomez when the track reopened at 8:30 following a renovation. Gomez guided Albaugh Family Stables LLC and Spendthrift Farm LLC's Thousand Words out to the track around 7 a.m. and rode him to the backstretch for some added distance before starting a lap around the one-mile track.

“He goes straight off,” Baffert said. “We don't back him up. We have to fool him. He's a little quirky.”

Thousand Words was scratched from the Derby after he reared and fell while being saddled. The Pioneerof the Nile colt was not injured, but Baffert's assistant, Jimmy Barnes, had to be taken to the hospital with a fractured right wrist.

Baffert said he is pleased how his runners have adjusted to Pimlico since being shipped from Louisville on Tuesday.

“Both horses are doing fine. They both look good out here,” Baffert said. “This track is so soft. You just don't hear them. I've always loved this surface here. They are both training well. There are no excuses.”

Both colts were schooled in Pimlico's indoor paddock before the second race Thursday afternoon. Baffert said he will follow his usual approach and saddle his Preakness horses in the paddock and not on the turf course.

Baffert is seeking his record-setting eighth Preakness victory and has often said that he enjoys the atmosphere surrounding the classic when it's the second race of the Triple Crown series. Due to changes from the COVID-19 pandemic, the Preakness is the last of the three classics for 3-year-olds to be run. He lamented this year's cancellation of the Alibi Breakfast, a Thursday morning tradition on Preakness week,

“We miss the breakfast, though,” he said. “I like that fried chicken. I don't know if I can win a Preakness without fried chicken. I have to go find some.”

Baffert's two starters will push his career Preakness total to 22 runners, passing Nick Zito into second place on the list of most starters for a trainer since 1909. D. Wayne Lukas is the leader with 44 starters.

Since making his Preakness debut in 1996 with Kentucky Derby runner-up Cavonnier, who was fourth at Pimlico, Baffert has participated in 18 Preaknesses. This will be his third-straight year and 10th in 11 years with a starter. The only year he was absent during that stretch was 2017.

Baffert won the Preakness both times he had multiple starters. In 2001, Point Given was the winner and Congaree was third. When American Pharoah picked up the second victory of his Triple Crown sweep in 2015, Dortmund was fourth.

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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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Asmussen’s Preakness Trio: Pneumatic ‘Doing Extremely Well,’ Max Player Showing Good ‘Energy’

Steve Asmussen's trio of Preakness contenders each had the easy half-mile workout Monday that is typical for the Hall of Fame trainer's horses five days before a race.

Winchell Thoroughbreds' Pneumatic, winner of Monmouth Park's Pegasus Stakes in his last start after finishing fourth in the Belmont Stakes (G1), worked a half-mile in 50.20 seconds over the Oklahoma training track at Saratoga. Max Player and Excession each were timed in 49.80 seconds at Churchill Downs.

“It's what we asked for, and they handled it really well,” Asmussen said of the three colts. “Pneumatic is doing extremely well since his win in the Pegasus. We're excited about getting him the opportunity at this level.”

Pneumatic drew Preakness Post No. 10 Monday.

“He had an outside draw in the Pegasus, a little bit shorter field, but an outside draw nonetheless,” Asmussen said. “Joe (Bravo) worked out a really good trip and hopefully he can do the same.”

Max Player, owned George Hall and SportBLX Thoroughbreds, will make his second start for Asmussen, having finished fifth in the Kentucky Derby. Max Player was third in both the Belmont Stakes and Travers when trained by Linda Rice.

Asmussen termed the work “a little leg-stretch,” adding, “I like his energy.”

Max Player drew Post No. 8 for his Preakness start.

“I think that's an excellent draw. I think he'll be able to stay a little closer from there,” Asmussen said. “Very anxious to see how he runs.”

Calumet Farms Excession will be making his first start since he was a fast-closing second at 82-1 odds behind the well-regarded Nadal in Oaklawn Park's Grade 2 Rebel Stakes on March 14. Excession will break on the rail, which Asmussen called “perfect.”

“He can follow the fence and make his late run,” he said.

Asmussen is shooting for his third victory in the Preakness, following Horses of the Year Curlin in 2007 and the filly Rachel Alexandra in 2009.

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