Flatter: White Abarrio puts two trainers through sliding doors

Arcadia, Calif.

The road to a Breeders’ Cup Classic trophy Saturday afternoon at Santa Anita took White Abarrio down a winding road and through some sliding doors. Those doors opened for him six months ago, just long enough for trainer Rick Dutrow to come through.

The sliding doors that looked at first like a trip to hell became a window of opportunity for Dutrow when the owners of White Abarrio were stuck without a trainer six months ago.

At the same time, fate conspired to push Saffie Joseph Jr., who had been the trainer of the beautiful gray colt, out those same sliding doors.

“I learned that there’s no regrets in anything,” Joseph said Saturday night, after the horse who once was in his stable won for someone else in the $6 million Classic. “That’s part of the process and part of the journey. I’m just proud of the horse.”

As they say in social media and in real life, it’s complicated.

The twists began when Joseph, who had handled White Abarrio’s first dozen races, was put on indefinite suspension by Churchill Downs. It was during the one-month period when the track lost 13 horses, including two who suffered fatal seizures on Joseph’s watch.

“I live my life to trust in the Lord, and I trust the process that with everything I have I am blessed,” Joseph said. “It wasn’t meant to be. That process starts from Churchill, and it’s part of the test of the testimony.”

Joseph, who had trained White Abarrio to a Grade 1 victory in the 2022 Florida Derby, suddenly was a man without portfolio let alone barn space at Churchill. His horses were in limbo.

Fearing more equine deaths on their stage that had the attention of media round the world, Churchill Downs, the corporation, prevented White Abarrio from racing in the Churchill Downs, the Grade 1 stakes, on the Kentucky Derby undercard at Churchill Downs, the racetrack.

And then the New York Racing Association jumped in.

“We had an issue where they scratched our horse,” co-owner Mark Cornett said Saturday. “NYRA decided they weren’t going to accept (Joseph’s) nominations, and I wanted to run in the Met Mile (G1). So I had to make a trainer switch.”

When necropsies could not pin down the cause of death for Parents Pride and Chasing Artie, Joseph was cleared to come back to Churchill Downs. By then, though, it was the end of June, too late for him to recoup White Abarrio.

Enter Richard E. Dutrow Jr., once a horse-racing pariah. He got the equivalent of the NCAA’s 1987 death penalty for SMU’s football program. His unprecedented, 10-year ban for medication violations sidelined him until this spring. The case NYRA brought against him became a lightning rod for debate between those who felt Dutrow got what was coming to him and a passionate group of supporters who felt he was railroaded.

Count Cornett and his brother Clint among the latter.

“When we had to make a decision going into the Met Mile, there happened to be a pretty good trainer available at the time named Rick Dutrow,” Cornett said. “It wasn’t too tough of a decision to send him up to New York to Rick. Some things happen for a reason.”

Suddenly, Dutrow had himself the best horse he has trained since Big Brown took him to the threshold of a Triple Crown in 2008. The man who looked after Saint Liam’s horse-of-the-year campaign in 2005 had a path through those sliding doors out of racing’s purgatory.

“I thought that I had a nice horse that was coming to me,” Dutrow said, “but we weren’t dreaming of anything like this at the time.”

Dutrow had to hit the ground running, because the Cornetts wanted to run White Abarrio in the Met Mile, even though the forced scratch at Churchill Downs meant coming off a three-month break.

A poor start doomed White Abarrio’s trip in the Met Mile, where Cody’s Wish was going to doom everyone anyway. But then Dutrow got better acquainted with the 4-year-old Race Day colt. That resulted in a 6 1/4-length upset at Saratoga in the Whitney (G1).

“The owners trusted me to train the horse, and now we get to go further with him now,” Dutrow said that summer day. “We can even think about the Breeders’ Cup Classic.”

Good thought. So was Dutrow’s plan to ship White Abarrio in September to train full-time at the very site where the Classic would be run.

“I found out when Santa Anita was reopening their track, and he was here that day,” Dutrow said. “I just thought it was better for the horse to do that as opposed to just hanging back in New York, where you could get stuck with weather.”

Five breezes later, White Abarrio proved he was ready for the Classic. Well, kind of. When his name turned up on a list of horses given an intra-articular injection Oct. 16, his workout schedule was thrown off. So, too, according to Dutrow, did the need for new shoes.

Once all that was resolved, White Abarrio was clocked going five furlongs in 59.8 seconds last Friday. Suddenly he went from questionable for America’s richest horse race to the buzz horse on the backside.

When White Abarrio made his move on the second turn Saturday at Santa Anita, there was no doubting he was going to win the Classic. While Dutrow was watching in disheveled celebration, Joseph found himself in a more introspective position.

“If you live your life in faith, which I learned through the trying times that I’ve had, your perspective changes on life,” said Joseph, 36, who had two third-place finishers in earlier Breeders’ Cup races Saturday. “

Now at 64, there is a whole new buzz around Dutrow, who indisputably proved he still knows how to train Thoroughbreds. He wants to remind more owners of that. Other than a media gathering at barn 88 on Sunday morning, Dutrow said he will continue to campaign on his behalf.

As he put it, “I’m going to be calling everybody tomorrow when I get done with Disneyland and say, ‘Hey, I am ready for some horses here. Can you guys send me some horses?’ ”