Horse training's long odds | FOX59.com | WXIN-TV

Horse training's long odds

Maryland-born King T. Leatherbury, the nation's third-winningest trainer, discusses the economics of the sport and Maryland's slots debate

By Todd Beamon, SunSpot Staff

May 14, 2003

Second of three parts

King T. Leatherbury is the nation's third-winningest horse trainer, with 16 victories from 6,000, according to the Daily Racing Form.

Leatherbury, a Shady Side native who was raised on a farm with horses, experienced his first victory in 1959 with Mister L in Florida. He celebrated his 5,000th victory in May 1993.

Leatherbury's career includes 25 training titles at Pimlico Race Course and at Laurel Park. He also has raced three horses in the Preakness Stakes at Pimlico: Indigo Star, which placed fifth in 1978; Thirty-Eight Paces, which placed fourth in 1981; and I Am the Game, which placed fourth in 1985.

Interviewed recently at the Maryland Jockey Club's lounge at Laurel Park, Leatherbury discussed a wide range of issues on the sport, including this week's Preakness Stakes.

SunSpot will feature more excerpts on Friday.

What's involved in preparing a horse to run in, say, the Preakness?

If you purchased a horse, which anybody can do, you'd have to get a horse trainer. He's the general manager, basically, of your horse business.

The trainer pays all the expenses -- the hay, the feed, the straw, the exercise boys -- all the help that's around, the groomers. All that he pays, and he charges you on a per-day basis.

Different tracks have different fee schedules, as far as the trainers go. In New York, you're probably going to pay about $75 a day. In Maryland, it probably averages about $45 to $50 a day. That's what you're going to have to pay to own that horse.

It's very expensive and, chances are, you're going to lose money on it. Most horse owners lose money. If you take all the expenses involved in horses all over the country for a year, and then take all the purses that are given out, you'll find that there's not enough purses to cover all the expenses.

So, then, who finances horse racing?

The bettors. They finance it by the take that comes out of the pot, and the owners, who are willing to try to race horses. Hopefully, they'll win enough in purses to cover their expenses. Sometimes, you get that good horse, and you're way ahead of the game. But for the average horse that's running, chances are that you are going to lose money on it.

Can you give me an example?

[In his program of horses racing that afternoon at Pimlico Race Course, Leatherbury pointed to a 5-year-old thoroughbred that was to run his seventh race since 2000. The horse lost.]

This horse has won only $6,000. Now, this horse has cost a whole lot more money than $6,000 to raise and to get to where he is. Somebody's paid the bills on him for five years, so that's a big loss.

You never know when you're going to have a good horse or a bad horse. If you knew, of course, you'd never have a bad horse.

How can you tell whether the horse is a good one or not?

Well, you can't tell. You basically go by the conformation, the appearance of the horse and its bloodlines. That's if he's never run.

Once he gets running, then that's out of the window. It doesn't matter who his parents were. Then, it's strictly ability. What abilities does he have? So the faster the horse, of course, the more valuable he is.

But going back to that $6,000 horse. Why do you think he hasn't won many races?

He's just one of those horses that hasn't come around yet -- or maybe he's had physical problems or things that has kept him from racing.

But winning $6,000 for only seven races -- and the horse is 5 years old?

He's been a tremendous loss. Now, when he did win, though, he won by 15 lengths, so that gave [the owners] hope. This horse still has a chance to come around and be all right; it's just that he's had setbacks in his career, just like any athlete.

Basically, we're not talking about race horses; we're talking about athletes who are animals -- as opposed to football players, who are humans.

Plenty of football players are on the sidelines now, who can't play -- and they may never play again because of their injuries.

It's the same thing: The horse is an athlete, and so some of them are sounder than others. A lot of it is hereditary, and a lot of its due to its conformation. If a horse is built a little crooked, or it's not perfectly balanced, naturally, he's more likely to hurt himself when he runs. His legs might not be as straight as a horse's legs should be.

Is this why horses can get injured in a race?

That's the reason horses injure themselves. They can chip bones in their joints because of the stress you can see when a horse runs. They have little thin legs, and here they are 1,000 pounds. And you see them pounding on that.

But if a horse has good action, good smooth action, he's less likely to hurt himself.

Regarding that $6,000 horse, to make it worth the owner's while, how much would that horse have had to bring in?

It's hard to estimate, because the horse is not in training all the time. If he's in training all year, it's going to take about $15,000 a year to keep a horse. So, you figure $15,000 a year …

However, some horses may only be in training for four months, then go to the farm somewhere. If you go back to the farm, it won't cost you as much.

But these are animals. Shouldn't they be treated more humanely?

No. That's where [animal-rights activists] are wrong. They're ignorant when they say that.

The average race horse probably gets better care than 98 percent of the people on this planet. Absolutely.

All a horse has to do is cough twice and we'd call a veterinarian in. Every little ailment is treated. He is fed the most nutritious meals we can find. He is treated and rubbed down, given baths, because people who are working with him know that if this horse wins, we get rewarded for it.

Horses get treated great, if you go around this planet and see how people get treated in this world. Believe me.

And all we ask is that they go out once about every two or three weeks and run in a race, which they love to do.

Earlier this year, Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. proposed licensing slot machines at three racetracks in Maryland, including Pimlico and Laurel Park. What was your perspective on this issue?

Let's go way back to when slots were first thought about in other states. People asked why should horse racing get a piece of the action. Because there's only so many gambling dollars out there, and we have a legitimate gambling game. This is legal, it's regulated by the state -- and it's 300 years of tradition.

And, it's a huge industry for us. If you look [at a race], you only see the finished product.

You don't see the farms. You need the breeding farms to get the horses. And the farms, what do they do? They hire the labor -- and some of these farm laborers are very unskilled people; they couldn't find jobs anywhere else. They'd be on welfare. But they go to the farms and find jobs. They'd find a place to live; some of these farms have facilities there for living. It's not a bad life at all.

Think about all the people involved: You've got the suppliers, people who sell you saddles and all the equipment. You've got the blacksmiths, the veternerians, the dentists -- who actually come around and work on the horse's teeth. The people to sell feed, raise the feed, raise the hay and the oats and all that. All that is included in the industry.

It's a huge industry that's supporting this one last finished product, which are the horses running around a circle on the racetrack.

But by bringing in another form of gambling in the state, you say: "Hey, wait a minute: There's only so much money out there that people are going to gamble with," so this is going to take some of the gambling money away from us. That's why we figure we're entitled to some of that action.

All the other states agreed with that, primarily the ones that are closest to us: Delaware and West Virginia. Now, Pennsylvania is thinking about it. New York is thinking about it.

What this does is give them a tremendous advantage over us. They can offer bigger purses.

When you offer a bigger purse, you're drawing away the better horses, the better trainers, the better jockeys; they're going to go to where the bigger purses are -- and we're left with a minor operation.

Instead of being in the big leagues in baseball, we're now a minor team.

The slots measure failed in the Maryland General Assembly. Why do you think it did?

This is my opinion, and I am going to talk political here: Maryland is an extremely liberal Democratic state. It always has been. You have a Republican come in here and he grabs the governorship. That hurt the Democrats. The Democrats think, "Damn, how can he come in here and win over a Democratic state like he did?"

So, naturally, they're going to be obstructionists. They're not going to play ball with him and let him get all the glory. They're going to be against him. The little power they have, they're going to use it against him. He was for slots, so right away, they're going to be against slots. He didn't have anything to do with it.

I would like to think that our politicians are saying: "We want to do what's best for the state. We want to do what's best for certain situations." But they play politics all the time.

That's what they're doing: "We're not going to let him get away with looking like the savior of Maryland" and saving Maryland after being in the hole -- running these deficits and everything. So, naturally, they're going to be against [slots].

Now, the [legislators] who voted against it, especially the Speaker [Michael E. Busch, D-Anne Arundel] -- he's not really against slots, but he made out that he was: He didn't like the bill; he didn't like this; he didn't like that. He was just using the little bit of power that he had to show [Ehrlich]: "Hey, you're not going to dominate. We still have some power. Us Democrats still have some power in this state."

It's strictly political -- had nothing to do with slot machines per se; had nothing to do with whether it was good for the state or bad for the state.

Nobody in the state Legislature can complain about slot machines when they've got the lottery, for God's sakes! The lottery is state run. It's advertised every night on television, encouraging people to bet. And who plays the lottery any more than people who don't have a lot of money? And there are odds on that. That's a 50 percent take in the lottery. They're taking 50 percent; they're not taking 14 percent [as in horse gambling].

The people who are against slots because of the gambling -- if they were against the lottery, then I give them credit for being honest. But a lot of people who are using that have other agendas.

The lottery is not a "good" form of gambling, in your opinion?

I think it's the worst kind of gambling, because you can go anywhere. You can put slots at the racetracks -- and a year after that, at least 80 percent of the people in this state wouldn't even know they're here.

Whereas, the lottery, God knows, you walk in any store and it's there. You're standing in line to pay for something, and you've got somebody in front of you buying a lottery ticket. That's in everybody's face, plus on the television all the time. And the slots would only be at the racetrack, where there's gambling, anyhow.

You don't see children around here. You don't see anybody who's going to influence young minds to do something that some people may not approve of. We're already set up for gambling. We've got the parking lots, enclosed security. You've never heard of anybody robbing a racetrack, have you? The greatest security in the world.

I have two boys -- they're 35 years old now -- but when they were children, we used to bring them to the track. People would say, "You take your kids to the track?" I'd say, "My God, it's the safest place in the world." Every entrance has a guard by it. Your children are as safe as can be.

Some critics of the slots proposal argued that it presented a big payday for racetrack owners. Did you agree?

That was what they had to hash out in the Legislature, what percentage they would get. You have to have the slot machines somewhere. To me, no better place than the racetrack.

We had slots in Southern Maryland. The problem with that was that it was pretty unregulated. The people would report that their machines took in $50, when they really took in $500.

In fact, I trained horses for a man who had slots. He went to pay me -- instead of giving me a check, like most people would -- he'd opened up his safe, and there was just money! ... I would be knocked out! He didn't say it came from his slots, but you knew it did.

So regulation is critical, right?

If you're going to have slots, they're going to have to be regulated. At the racetrack, it's a sensible way to have it.

If you're going to have it in hotels, then who says which hotels are going to have it? And, you know you're not going to give it to all the hotels, so it makes sense to have it at the racetrack.

Is the track owner going to make money? Sure. Any money he makes, he's still going to have to pay taxes on it. He's going have to hire people. Any business that hires people, has to pay unemployment taxes, Social Security taxes.

It's not bad to have somebody make money. It generates money everywhere.

Now, does he get an excessive amount? That's up to the [legislators] to figure out. He certainly deserves to make a normal profit on it. It all trickles down.

But some slots critics said why should slots be given to help an industry that's done little to help itself over the years?

It's not that we haven't helped our own selves over the years. The reason why you have to help us is because of the competition from other states. That's basically what it is. And if [slots] do come in, you're taking some of that gambling money from us.

Would slots have opened the door to gambling casinos in Maryland?

It's just the opposite. In the casino business, their biggest money earner is slot machines. If you take that away from them, there's less incentive for any casino to come to Maryland. Having slots is actually a detriment to having casinos in the state.

Friday: Thoughts on this year's Kentucky Derby and the Preakness Stakes.