The message from Hallandale at the top of 2025 is that White Abarrio sticks to business, no matter what anybody else thinks, says, or does. The six-year-old, trained by Saffie Joseph Jr. and beautifully guided by the incomparable Irad Ortiz Jr, blew past pacesetter Saudi Crown and favorite Locked to snatch the victor’s share of the $3-million 2025 Pegasus pot by a breathtaking six-and-a-half lengths.

The victory was more than just a bracing demonstration of athletic power. White Abbario’s run this afternoon came as a considerable surprise in that it wasn’t remotely a close contest, which is not to detract from the superb performance, rather, the surprise at the gray’s dominance only illuminates that the still-somewhat-lukewarm regard in which the six-year-old operated was more or less entirely wrong. The irony of that, in the face of his 2023 Breeders’ Cup Classic win, is great. It caps his career with a grand punctuation mark, as if the victor, coming down the stretch, were saying to the crowd, Forgot about me, didja? Maybe this’ll help!

He broke well from the four-hole and Ortiz threaded him very nicely through to settle in fifth at the beginning of the backstretch. Saudi Crown held the lead all the way up the backstretch, with Ortiz slyly nosing White Abarrio from fifth to fourth, and in a lane just outside the group just off Saudi Crown. In the far turn, with plenty of horse under him, Ortiz softly let White Abarrio nose up into second behind Saudi Crown, and in the nanosecond they exited the turn into the stretch, Ortiz gave him his head.

It was as if the field were suddenly frozen still with just one horse and one rider still moving. As he assembled it, White Abarrio was suddenly three, then five, then six lengths away, sent flying by some other form of locomotion than just a run. That he is a six-year-old vet of many battles only adds to the valor on display.