Michael McCarthy is fine. His family is fine. His house is fine. McCarthy, the trainer of Kentucky Derby favorite Journalism, repeats these three things almost like a mantra during the course of a 30-minute phone call. His is not merely a need to affirm that all is well but to underscore his fervent desire to neither overstate his own situation, nor exploit the more tragic circumstances of his neighbors.
McCarthy lives in Altadena, or he did for the past 10 years until January, when the Eaton fires mercilessly ripped through his neighborhood. While the flames spared his own home, a “three-iron shot away,’’ McCarthy says, is utter devastation. Dear friends have lost everything.
Yet “fine,” the word McCarthy keeps going back to, is a relative term. He has returned to his home just once in the past four months, shuttling from a hotel to friends and now to his mother-in-law’s to live. His teenage daughter, Stella, who at 14 already has lived through a global pandemic that upended her childhood, has been able to go to school, but she’s not in her bedroom or around her friends in the way teenagers crave.
The Army Corps of Engineers has set up shop on a golf course not far from where McCarthy lived, and more than 100 days after the fires began, the cleanup continues. The optimistic goal is that it will be completed by the end of summer, but even after the debris is cleared, a return isn’t assured. Along with the rebuild, there is real concern about the toxicity in the air from all that the fires consumed — car batteries, melted plastic, gasoline, asbestos from the older homes. Researchers from the University of Texas recently patrolled the neighborhoods in Altadena and the Pacific Palisades, and, according to a report by The New York Times, found particles of pollutants five times greater than normal.
Most of all, McCarthy’s epicenter is gone.
“The bakery that we went to, the grocery store, the schools,’’ he says, “none of it is there. The brick and mortar can be rebuilt, but the memories can’t.’’
Michael McCarthy walks around Churchill Downs in preparation for 151th Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs. (Photo: Andy Lyons/Getty Images)
And so while “fine” might be McCarthy’s word of choice, safe is perhaps a better option. Because no one in Altadena, including McCarthy, is fine.
A house only becomes a home when its address is part of a neighborhood and the neighborhood is part of a community. Even for those like McCarthy who have a house to return to, the comfort of home burned away in the ash.
“It’s crushing, that’s what people don’t understand,’’ he says. “It’s all gone, and now it’s just a toxic wasteland. You get tired of thinking about it and talking about it because there’s absolutely nothing you can do.”
Which is where Journalism comes in. He needed the very things McCarthy lost — order, routine, structure. And in turn, offered McCarthy the one thing he needed: a purpose.
Amid chaos, upheaval, misinformation, disorder and uncertainty, Michael McCarthy had to get a horse ready to win the Kentucky Derby.
When he was a kid, McCarthy and his family relocated from Youngstown, Ohio, to Arcadia, California, within literal earshot of the calls to post at Santa Anita. Horsemen and horsewomen find themselves lured to the track for all sorts of reasons — family ties, a love for animals. For McCarthy, it just felt like where he belonged.
Aron Wellman felt the same pull. He was born in the month of August, or as he likes to joke, when the surf meets the turf at the Del Mar race track. At 8 years old, Wellman was bopping around the backside at Del Mar, and at 14, working as a groom.
Horse racing is a fairly small world, and, between Del Mar and Santa Anita, McCarthy and Wellman ran into one another enough to become friendly, even as their careers wound forward in seemingly divergent directions. McCarthy stayed with his first love and went all in on horse racing. He worked with trainer John O’Hara, took animal husbandry courses at Cal Poly Pomona, learned from trainers Doug Peterson (who trained Seattle Slew after his Triple Crown career) and Ben Cecil (a well-regarded turf trainer who won 325 races in his career), bent the ear of area clockers and dabbled enough to learn a little something about breeding. Eventually, he went to work with Todd Pletcher, riding shotgun as the trainer gobbled up stakes race wins, including the Belmont Stakes with filly Rags to Riches, and missed out on multiple shots at the Derby before finally breaking through with Super Saver in 2010.
Wellman, in the meantime, played collegiate soccer, pursued a law degree and worked as a trial attorney in Los Angeles. He didn’t quite quiet his thirst for horse racing, and dabbled in a few horse racing partnerships to keep at least a toe in the game. Finally, in 2008, Wellman’s inner 8-year-old won out. He gave up his law practice and instead went to work full time as the vice president of Team Valor, a horse partnership group. Three years after that, Wellman took the leap, venturing out on his own to form Eclipse Thoroughbred Partners. In 2011, his first year in business, a horse by the name of Sweet Cat finished second in the JPMorgan Jessamine Stakes at Keeneland.
Todd Pletcher was her trainer, and Wellman and McCarthy reconnected.
Like Wellman, McCarthy eventually decided it was time to stand on his own, and in 2014, he left Pletcher and the East Coast to return to California and work for himself. He had one horse — Whisk — and Wellman was her owner. Whisk didn’t amount to much, but because of their longstanding history and McCarthy’s relationship with the meticulously organized Pletcher, Wellman continued to send him horses. In 2016, the owner and trainer partnered on Illuminant, giving McCarthy his first Grade 1 win, and since then, McCarthy has trained 20 other Eclipse Thoroughbred horses.
The latest is Journalism. And on the first Saturday in May, two kids who grew up running around the track searching for something they couldn’t name will bring the favorite to the starting gate of the Kentucky Derby.
“This is where we’re supposed to be,’’ says Wellman, the horse’s co-owner who is responsible for the horse’s name. As the sports editor of his high school newspaper, Wellman wanted to play off the horse’s dam, Mopotism, and landed on a profession he always appreciated.
“Maybe that sounds cocky,” Wellman says, “but I truly believe that when you have the dedication, the work ethic, the instincts and the decency that Michael has, it all eventually points you to this sort of moment. That doesn’t mean the horse will be successful, but he has earned this moment.’’
In the pre-dawn hours when the fires crept close enough that McCarthy and his family had to evacuate, he was not thinking long term. Fleeing at 4:40 in the morning, he grabbed a change of clothes, a few valuables, and moved to a hotel. “I figured once the electricity came back on, we’d go back,’’ he says. “You live in that area long enough, you get used to these sorts of things, but the Santa Ana winds, they take no prisoners. The embers just started flying.’’
The fires threatened but never touched Santa Anita, where Journalism is stabled, but the situation grew dicey enough and the air quality bad enough that McCarthy temporarily relocated all of his horses, including Journalism, to San Luis Rey Downs, a two-hour ride south. “It was a seamless transition in a time of chaos,’’ McCarthy says.
As is his way, McCarthy is understating the situation. Horses thrive on order and routine. Their schedules are plotted methodically — high-speed workouts once a week, except after a race when there’s a two-week break; more casual gallops every day, except typically for the day or so after a workout — and their rest, stamina, diet and overall well-being monitored carefully, all to ensure that they peak in time for the first Saturday in May. Fleeing raging fires with a Derby contender, all while dealing with personal tumult, is not on the schedule.
“It was a very short window of time to make all of these decisions,’’ Wellman says. “And there were a lot of moving parts. The weight of the world was on Michael’s shoulders there for a bit.’’
Journalism during a training session. (Photo: Zoe Metz)
Yet the day-to-day order that Journalism required did bring McCarthy some semblance of relief from the endless questions, headaches and worries stemming from the fires. McCarthy’s house is standing, but returning to it is an entirely different issue. “Is it safe?” he says. “I have no idea.”
One group, Eaton Fire Residents United, found lead in 90 unaffected homes they tested, 76 percent of which were above EPA limits, and only one single rebuild permit has been issued.
That McCarthy has been able to focus on Journalism is a credit to his fortitude. He is not easily ruffled and is exceptionally detail oriented, and while Journalism is easily his best horse, he is hardly new to big races. In 2018, City of Light provided McCarthy with his breakthrough, winning the Breeders’ Cup Dirt Mile that year and the Pegasus a year later. McCarthy won the 2021 Preakness Stakes with Rombauer and a year ago, sent Endlessly to the starting gate at the Derby. Endlessly, though, was really a turf horse, and the 48-1 shot lived down to his expectations, finishing ninth.
The game is a little different with the Derby favorite.
Horse trainers are notoriously — and understandably — cautious when it comes to talking about their favored horses. Too many things can go wrong, all the way up to post time, and the difference between success and disaster is thinner than the hair on the horse’s mane.
“It’s like being the coach and the GM of a pro franchise,’’ McCarthy says. “You have so many things to worry about, you don’t even have time to think about the journey; only what can go wrong. Right now, we’re just dotting our i’s and crossing our t’s, hoping everything goes as smoothly as possible.’’
To date, it certainly has. Journalism finished third in his first start and since then is undefeated in his last four. He won the San Felipe Stakes in March by 1 ¾ lengths, recording the fastest Beyer speed figure of any of the Derby entrants. A month later, he overcame severe bumping by another horse on the backstretch to win the Santa Anita Derby by three-quarters of a length, beating Bob Baffert’s 2-year-old champion, Citizen Bull, in the process.
Should Journalism win the Derby, McCarthy, of course, will be thrilled. This is what horsemen dream of. As Wellman explained, imagining a winner’s circle celebration with his lifelong friend, “It gives me chills. There is so much emotion with this race. Nothing compares to the Kentucky Derby. It transcends the sport. It’s a part of Americana, and to do that together? I can’t begin to describe that.’’
But McCarthy wants no part in creating some sort of cathartic healing story around Journalism. Should he win the Derby, the horse will not change anything in Altadena. Friends have lost homes and treasured keepsakes; business owners have no businesses to keep them afloat; children are without schools and an entire community has lost its center.
With or without a Derby win, McCarthy will return to his mantra. He is fine. His family is fine. His home is fine. “I’m representative of a community that has lost so much, that’s all,’’ he says. “I’m a lucky person in a very, very unlucky situation.”
(Illustration: Dan Goldfarb / The Athletic; Photography: Zoe Metz / The Athletic; additional photography courtesy of Michael McCarthy)