White Abarrio (Race Day) has won four Grade I races, earned $8,445,170 and has been going strong for six years. But that hasn't been enough for his owners to reach a deal with a stud farm, or at least one they found acceptable. But that may be about to change. Mark Cornett, who is a co-owner of the 7-year-old veteran, told the TDN that negotiations are underway with three farms in Kentucky and it is expected that an announcement will be made shortly regarding where he will begin his career as a stallion. White Abarrio will be retired at the end of this year.“After this year, he will be retired to stud somewhere,” Cornett said. “In fact, we're in negotiations with three different farms in Kentucky as of today. Hopefully, we'll have something done in the next two to three weeks.”If White Abarrio were by a more fashionable stallion, with all the success he has had on the racetrack, which includes a win in the GI Breeders' Cup Classic in 2023, he no doubt would have been retired years ago. But the top farms in Kentucky apparently have had reservations about his pedigree and, therefore, his marketability. Race Day (Tapit) won the GII Oaklawn Handicap, the GII Fayette Stakes and the GII Razorback Handicap. He began his stud career in 2016 at Spendthrift Farm before being dispatched to South Korea in 2020.Cornett said White Abarrio's win in this year's Oaklawn Handicap over reigning Horse of the Year Sovereignty (Into Mischief) and three-time Grade I winner Journalism (Curlin), seemed to open some eyes among Kentucky's stud farms.“We definitely sensed a change after that race,” he said.Cornett owns White Abarrio along with his brother Clint, whose stable goes under the name of C2 Racing. The other owners are Gary Barber and La Milagrosa Stable LLC.Cornett said that the owners have received offers over the years, but none that they considered worth taking. The decision to retire him was made all the more difficult because the horse kept earning so much money on the racetrack.“There's been a lot of misinformation going around,” Cornett said. “We've had offers over the last couple of years, but they just weren't what we were looking for. And this horse is so sound and athletic and everything else. We always felt that he had a lot of miles left on him. Even two years ago, we identified that fact. We were coming off a bad year (in 2024) and we just put pen and paper to it and we kind of handicapped the situation and came to the realization that we could make more on the racetrack than we could sending him to stud. So, basically, we just delayed it till this year. After the Pegasus, we had every intention of retiring him.”Cornett believes that White Abarrio's on-track success speaks for itself and that's what makes him an attractive stallion prospect.“We are on the racing side of this business,” he said. “We're not on the commercial sales side. So we think there's a great opportunity. This horse has proven over and over his durability. He's run in 16 Grade I races. I don't even know the last horse that ran in 16 Grade Is. Not only has he stayed racing sound, he's maintained his high peak and has continued to perform in high-quality races.”If some potential breeders are still turned off by the fact that White Abarrio is by Race Day, Cornett believes that is a mistake.“This whole process has been a little frustrating,” Cornett said. “We can't reconcile the fact that they're holding Race Day as a knock against him. That horse could run. He won the Oaklawn Park Handicap in his own right. He never got a fair shot at stud. He had two horses (White Abarrio and Barber Road) run in the 2022 Kentucky Derby. Before you knew it, Spendthrift shipped him off to Korea. And we had to hold back because of that decision by Spendthrift. What if Race Day had stayed here and kept producing high-quality horses and was standing in the States for $50,000, $75,000, $100,000? What would they be saying then?”Even without a stud deal having been finalized, Cornett said he is already hearing from owners and breeders who are eager to breed to White Abarrio.“Literally, we've gotten hundreds of calls, literally hundreds,” he said. “People are asking, what do we need to do to breed to White Abarrio? Where's he going to go stand? What's he going to stand for? We want to have his babies in our racing program. I've got five mares here I want to send to him. I tell them 'just hold on, you'll know soon.'”Cornett said that once a stud deal is finalized, his team will be launching a website where people can go to find more information regarding how they can send their mares to White Abarrio.“Between Gary Barber and C2, we've both got really good racing programs and we're both going to support him and he's going to get a real shot from us,” Cornett said. “So if we can get some other big-time racing programs involved, I think he'll be in really good shape.”Cornett also confirmed that White Abarrio will make his next start in the June 27 GI Stephen Foster Stakes at Churchill Downs, where he will be expected to have a rematch with Sovereignty.The post White Abarrio Connections Say A Stud Deal Is Imminent appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.