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Ben's Cat to make sixth straight appearance in Jim McKay Turf Sprint

Legendary Maryland horse trainer, King Leatherbury, left, with then 9-year-old gelding Ben's Cat. (Doug Kapustin / Baltimore Sun)

The horse will run out of the No. 2 position Friday at Pimlico. The race is for horses 3 years old and older, with a $100,000 prize.

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Why shouldn't trainer Doug O'Neill be smiling? Not only does he have an undefeated horse who's seemingly impervious to anxiety. He's surrounded by a team of people — and when he says "team," he utters the word with religious conviction — who have stood with him through some of the harshest disappointments the racing game could muster.

"He doesn't seem to get older, that's the amazing thing," his trainer, King Leatherbury, said in a release Thursday. "See the thing is … you get good horses come up every year, but they don't last. So people can fall in love with horses and two years, then they're gone. But here's a horse that's been around and keeps coming back every year, so that makes him special."

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Leatherbury, 83, was inducted into the Hall of Fame last year. In all, his horses have 35,854 starts with 6,468 wins, earning more than $63 million. He has saddled four horses in the Preakness — in 1978, 1981, 1985 and 2005 — with two fourth-place finishers, Thirty Eight Paces in 1981 and I Am The Game in 1985.

"[Ben's Cat will] probably be the favorite [Friday], and we'll probably be the best horse in the race," Leatherbury said in the release. "And we're expecting to win."

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