Photo courtesy of Eclipse Sportswire

Corser Catches Lightening in a Bottle With Breeders’ Cup Classic Favorite Arabian Knight

When Arabian Knight’s breeder sold his Uncle Mo colt for $2.3 million at auction last year, he couldn’t believe his luck.

“I felt like I caught lightning in a bottle,” Mark Corser said. It was just the third horse he ever sent through the sale ring.

Corser, a native of Great Britain, operates a small breeding farm in Lexington, Kentucky, which he bought somewhat spontaneously during a visit there in 2019. To accommodate his new enterprise, Mark uprooted his family and his business, a food processing company, from California and re-settled in the Bluegrass state.

Arabian Knight as a foal; Photo courtesy of Mark Corser

“The food processing business is my weekday job and the farm is my weekend one. Obviously, I have very capable people actually running the farm operation for me,” he said.

Arabian Knight was nicknamed “Little Mo” by Corser’s daughter Lilly after being foaled at the farm. It was her habit to nickname all the new horses at the farm. The horse soon became like a member of the family.

“He was one of three weanlings we had at the farm and being with him—and the two others—provided quality time for us,” Corser said.

Arabian Knight spent his first 16 months with them before going through the auction ring, where he was consigned by Top Line Sales. Corser previously acquired Arabian Knight’s dam, Borealis Night, for $285,000 at the 2019 Keeneland November Breeding Stock Sale already in foal to Uncle Mo. The colt was formally named by his buyer, Amr Zedan, who sent him to Hall of Fame trainer Bob Baffert after taking him home from the 2022 Ocala Breeders’ Sales Spring Sale of 2-Year-Olds in Training.

After the success at the auction, Corser bred Borealis Night to Quality Road, resulting in a half-brother to Arabian Knight. In foal, again, this time to Curlin the following year, the dam was sadly passed away due to a paddock accident. But her legacy lives on in Arabian Knight, the morning-line favorite for the $6 million Longines Breeder’s Cup Classic (G1).

Corser will be at Santa Anita Park this weekend to see the colt compete in the weekend’s richest race. He comes off a Sept. 2 victory in the FanDuel Pacific Classic Stakes (G1) at Del Mar, and looks to collect his second top-level victory in just his fifth career start, this one on the world stage.

Sitting at Cincinnati airport heading to the @BreedersCup for the first time, going to watch my boy Arabian Knight run in the classic, still can’t believe we have a breeders cup runner with the third horse we bred.

Let’s go Boy @TopLineTB @ZedanRacing pic.twitter.com/1nHxpXGNVi

— Mark Corser (@MarkCorser1) November 2, 2023

“I’ve seen him run twice, the first time in my backyard, winning his debut at Keeneland, then (when he was third) in this summer’s TVG.com Haskell Stakes (G1),” Corser said.

He’s hoping lightning will strike again.