Joseph hopes White Abarrio can make his Kentucky Derby dream come true
LOUISVILLE, Ky. – April has been a breakthrough month for Saffie Joseph Jr., but he’s hoping May brings an even greater first.
Joseph won the Florida Derby for the first time in his ascendant training career, sending out White Abarrio to victory in the Gulfstream Park showcase April 2. The next day, Joseph wrapped up the Gulfstream Championship meet training title, ending an 18-year reign by Todd Pletcher.
“It was quite amazing,” Joseph said earlier this week via Zoom from his South Florida base.
As April has unfolded, Joseph has taken the lead atop the current spring-summer standings at his home track while also winning a $115,000 allowance at the Keeneland spring meet with Awesome Gerry.
But it’s all small potatoes when compared to what looms on the horizon for the 35-year-old Barbados native.
White Abarrio is one of the top contenders in the May 7 Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs, and Joseph, as a lifelong horseman, is acutely aware of how his life and career would be affected if the handy gray colt could pull off a win in America’s premier race.
“I’ve won the Kentucky Derby many times before I’ve gone to bed at night and many times in the shower,” said Joseph, a third-generation horseman. “I’ve won it a lot in my dreams, but not in real life yet.”
White Abarrio was purchased privately for a medium six-figure sum by his current owners, the C2 Racing of brothers Clint and Mark Cornett and the La Milagrosa of Antonio Pagnano, after winning his September debut at Gulfstream for his former connections, Clap Embroidery and trainer Carlos Perez. Bred in Kentucky by Spendthrift Farm, the Race Day colt then won an October allowance, after which Joseph sent him to Churchill for the Grade 2 Kentucky Jockey Club in late November. White Abarrio finished a decent third behind Smile Happy and Classic Causeway in what remains his only career defeat in five starts.
“That was the one race when he got an adverse kind of trip,” said Joseph. “He was bottled up inside the whole way, kind of keen early, nowhere to go. When he did get out, around the eighth pole, he had no chance of winning at that point, but I was happy to see him sustain momentum and stay on steadily. I thought that race taught him a lot. We felt very confident that he would move forward off that race.”
In winning the Holy Bull and Florida Derby in his two subsequent starts, White Abarrio kept his Gulfstream record perfect. Joseph waves off any thought the colt will be less effective elsewhere.
“To have a race over the [Churchill] track is important,” he said. “It’s the only time he got beat, but it wasn’t because of the track, in that sense. He handled the track just fine.”
White Abarrio is scheduled to have his final pre-Derby work Saturday at Gulfstream, then will ship north by van Sunday, arriving Monday in the wee hours of the morning. He’ll make his first return visit to the racetrack Tuesday, said Joseph.
“He’s plenty fit,” said Joseph. “We’re just trying to maintain everything, hoping he’ll fire another big race.”
Dreams keep turning real for Joseph, who won the Triple Crown in his native country before age 20. He ran his first horse in the U.S. in 2011, but it was only within the last five years or so that his name started catching the attention of major clients. His only previous Derby starter, Ny Traffic, was eighth at 12-1 in the September 2020 running won by Authentic.
“The first five or six years were a struggle to get people to know that we were capable of training their horses,” said Joseph. “It just gradually built up that we picked up owners.
“This is what I dreamed of. I came from Barbados, basically with a dream that I thought would be easy to achieve. Then you get here and reality sets in and you’re like, ‘Whoa, it’s not as easy to get the opportunities.’ You’ve got to start over, basically. The grind to get there … to see it all come to fruition, it’s very gratifying.”