Stephen Foster: Credit the goat for White Abarrio's surge

Louisville, Ky.

Timing is everything.

Training had just ended Friday morning at Churchill Downs. Then the skies opened. It poured relentlessly.

White Abarrio, who had just jogged clockwise once along the outer rail of the main track, took in the storm while walking around a shed row. At age 7, he was like the old gray mariner who had seen plenty of difficult weather.

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“He used to be a little high strung in the stall and things of that nature,” co-owner Mark Cornett said. “Ever since we added the goat, things have changed.”

Yes, a goat. The captain met his new Florida-bred first mate late last summer. His name is Brownie. He seems to be the perfect mix of emotional-support device and lucky charm, quickly becoming White Abarrio’s BFF.

“All we’ve seen is positives, and the results on the track have said the same,” trainer Saffie Joseph Jr. said. “Hopefully, it continues.”

White Abarrio lines up Saturday against 2025 horse of the year Sovereignty, Grade 1 winners Magnitude and Baeza and pacesetting long shot Willy D’s in the Grade 1, $2 million Stephen Foster Stakes. It is a steppingstone that qualifies the winner for the Breeders’ Cup Classic.

Brownie’s arrival, first reported in October by Paulick Report, followed an off-the-board finish for White Abarrio in the Jockey Club Gold Cup (G1) 10 months ago at Saratoga. Ever since, the aging son of Race Day has been invigorated. He finished an eye-opening second to stablemate Skippylongstocking in the Pegasus World Cup Invitational (G1) in January at Gulfstream Park. Then he vanquished Sovereignty on April 18 in the Oaklawn Handicap (G2) for his first win in more than a year.

Timing is everything. Since Brownie came along, Joseph does not want to mess with the success.

“We use a lot of goats with the horses, mainly fillies,” he said. “Sometimes colts are too aggressive with them, and they don’t really accept them, but he accepted the goat. Obviously you don’t know until you try it, and it seems to keep him relaxed and calm. They’ve gotten along very good, so we’re not going to change it, no.”

There might have been even more success for the team of White Abarrio and Brownie if it were not for a controversial veterinarian scratch in the final minutes before the 2025 Breeders’ Cup Dirt Mile at Del Mar. That led C2 Racing Stable, which is run by brothers Mark and Clint Cornett, and co-owner Gary Barber to sue the Breeders’ Cup, the California Horse Racing Board and Del Mar.

As that $10 million case in Los Angeles awaits more lawyering, White Abarrio and Brownie have been oblivious to it all back at Churchill Downs. As the rain pelted down outside, they kept their eyes on one another Friday morning. The 7-year-old multimillionaire took his slow laps around barn 21, repeatedly shuffling past his horned little buddy in the company of hot walker and barn foreman Wayde Hackett.

“He used to paw a lot in the stall, and he doesn’t do that anymore,” Cornett said. “He’s always been relaxed once you put the tack on him, but I think he’s a lot more relaxed around the barn, especially.”

A chill horse is a productive horse. At least that is the hope around the Cornetts and Joseph and his dad, himself a successful trainer from Barbados who also is in town for the big race.

“The horse is happy, which is a main concern,” Cornett said. “He shows it just in his overall mannerisms, his bounce to his step when he’s jogging on the track, the way he’s carrying his head. When he shows these kinds of signs, he usually fires a big race.”

Joseph saw a lot of that before White Abarrio delivered his upset victory over Sovereignty and Journalism in the Oaklawn Handicap. Sovereignty was the one who looked out of character that day, rushing to the early lead like never before.

“I was hoping that it wouldn’t happen where (White Abarrio) runs a really great race, but you don’t win,” Joseph said. “We thought on paper that we could be on the lead, pretty loose. Then he broke. He was on the lead for the first bit, then he takes back into the first turn, and they’re like, whoa, this is different.”

Joseph said he went through a rollercoaster of emotions as jockey Irad Ortiz Jr. conceded 1 1/2 lengths of ground to Sovereignty. A wider and wider spin out of the second turn had Joseph wondering if White Abarrio had enough left to make a winning move. He did. With two lengths to spare.

“Briefly it looked like he might almost be empty, so you go from almost that oh-no kind of feeling in less than two seconds to he’s outside and into the bridle,” Joseph said. “It’s like you’re feeling 100%, and then 70% because he’s inside, then you drop to about 30%, then you jump in with about 80% in like a second-and-a-half.”

After training 20 of White Abarrio’s previous 25 races, Joseph saw something different that day.

“That was the first time he probably ran horses down in the stretch,” he said. “You see Irad sitting on him like that, and you’re like, all right, Irad, you better be right. You know how much horse you have. But he was right. He knew what he had under him.”

Timing is everything. That day also marked the return of Sovereignty from an eight-month break, something his trainer Bill Mott said may have been a bigger factor than the surprise of his early speed. This time Sovereignty will be in his second start back. And Mike Maker-trained Willy D’s, who led the whole way to win the Lake Ouachita last month at Oaklawn, figures to lead the field through the first turn of Saturday’s 1 1/8-mile race.

Joseph said the Oaklawn Handicap showed him that White Abarrio can stalk whatever pace is set Saturday.

“The horse is versatile,” he said. “He has a very good turn of foot. And when you have a good turn of foot, you can get yourself out of situations. If you say that he’s going to run his race, I’m not really worried about the trip. You always want your horse to run his race. Once he runs his race and shows up, I think he’s versatile enough. Irad knows him to put him in the right kind of spots.”

As is most trainers’ wont, Joseph would not predict the outcome of Saturday’s race. But he was coaxed into mapping the pace.

“On paper you would say probably Willy D’s is going to be in front,” he said. “You think Magnitude sits second. Baeza hasn’t been breaking well, but maybe he sits out back. And then Sovereignty and White Abarrio will be probably third and fourth. That’s how you may see it, but who saw the Oaklawn Handicap being the way it turned out? I try not to even overthink it.”

The same goes for the weather, which has been tempestuous this week. The ever-changing forecast from the National Weather Service said Saturday morning that there is an 80% chance of maybe three-quarters of an inch of rain before 2 p.m. EDT. The Stephen Foster is scheduled to go at 6:14 p.m.

“That is the unknown, having a sloppy track. White Abarrio has run on it twice before,” Joseph said, referring to a third in the 2022 Cigar Mile (G1) and a fourth in the 2025 Met Mile (G1). “They were both one-turn miles, so you can’t really judge.”

Regardless of how it goes with Saturday’s two turns around 1 1/8 miles, the 2026 goal for White Abarrio is the 1 1/4-mile Breeders’ Cup Classic at nearby Keeneland on Oct. 31. He won that race at Santa Anita in 2023 with Rick Dutrow training. That was after the Cornetts waited for Joseph’s name to be cleared when two of his horses inexplicably died at Churchill Downs that spring.

White Abarrio has earned $8,445,170 for the Cornetts, Barber and Antonio Pagnano’s La Milagrosa Stable. Joseph saddled his Grade 1 triumphs in the 2022 Florida Derby and the 2025 Pegasus. The last-out win at Oaklawn was his first for Joseph away from Gulfstream Park.

Timing is everything. On the heels of that score, White Abarrio returned to Churchill Downs for the first time since he finished 16th in the 2022 Kentucky Derby. His only other start beneath the spires resulted in a third-place finish in the 2021 Kentucky Jockey Club (G2), the first graded stakes of his career.

“He’s obviously more proven in that aspect,” Joseph said. “When he came here (for the Kentucky Derby), he had only won one Grade 1, so he’s more proven. He’s proven that he’s been among the top of the class for a long time, and we feel like mentally he’s much more mature.”

Which brought the conversation back to Brownie.

“He’s always been calm on the track, paddock, that kind of stuff. Very professional,” Joseph said. “But around the barn, sometimes he could get a little rambunctious. We’ve seen a big change in that. That’s why we attribute the change to the goat.”

Their days together are numbered, though. Cornett said the Whitney (G1) next month at Saratoga could be a next step on the way to the Breeders’ Cup Classic and then a final race at age 8 in the 2027 Pegasus. After that White Abarrio begins his breeding career at Gainesway in Kentucky through a deal that was revealed a little more than two weeks ago.

Joseph and Cornett are aware the clock is ticking down on a racing story that has been both successful and turbulent. The next seven months will be a blur.

“For sure,” Joseph said. “I mean we’re enjoying it. You don’t want to think too far ahead. You just want to enjoy this one. I think after that Oaklawn race, he really gained a lot more fans. Even people that probably critiqued him, they jumped aboard and believed in him.”

Asked to compare White Abarrio with a human athlete, Joseph immediately turned to the newly crowned NBA champion New York Knicks.

“He has showed his mental composure to be tough, and obviously Jalen Brunson showed that in the playoffs,” Joseph said. “That would actually be the comparison right now because it’s relevant. For people that don’t really understand racing, you watch Brunson produce what he produces, you’re like, wow, how does he do it? Always in the clutch time. This horse, he’s been clutch in that aspect. If you think about what you would like him to pass on into the breed, it would be his durability and his mental composure in clutch moments. He’s just calm in those big clutch moments when there’s big crowds, and he handles that well.”

The current owners still will have a stake in the breeding of White Abarrio. Cornett hopes these final races are less a farewell and more like sending the kids off to college.

“He’s going to just stay in the family and go to a second career,” Cornett said. “Hopefully we’ve got another 10-15 good years together, and he produces in the breeding shed like he has on the racetrack.”

A storyteller could do worse than to have White Abarrio’s tale at his disposal. Barber, the owner, also is Barber, the movie producer.

“I’m chirping in Gary’s ear every week about that,” Cornett said. “You know he did ‘Seabiscuit.’ But it is an interesting story.”

Instead of the signature lion with whom Barber was familiar in his days at MGM, maybe he could go with a goat.

Timing is everything.