At 8:26 on the morning of Wednesday, January 8, a silver 53-foot, 18-wheeled horse transport van rolled up alongside Barn 59 at Santa Anita Park in Arcadia, California, seven miles due west of Pasadena and about 20 miles northwest of downtown Los Angeles, in the foothills of the San Gabriel mountains.
Workers efficiently loaded 15 horses in the care of thoroughbred trainer Michael McCarthy up a short ramp and into small travel stalls on the van. The process took just 25 minutes. At 8:51, driver Ysidro Cruz — everybody calls him Sid — slowly negotiated the hulking van off the backstretch to Baldwin Ave. and toward his final destination at the San Luis Rey Downs thoroughbred training center just north of San Diego. McCarthy also has stalls there, although unlike at Santa Anita, no parimutuel races are contested.
Cruz took the I-210 Freeway west to the I-15 Freeway south before exiting on Route 76, a few miles from the end. The 107-mile trip took two hours and seven minutes, pretty good time in L.A. traffic on a weekday morning. (Kerrie Sahadi, the third-generation horse transport owner whose company, KC Horse Transport, moved McCarthy’s horses, provided the exact travel times from her GPS tracking database.) The horses were offloaded into McCarthy’s barn at San Luis Rey, and bedded down. “Nothing remarkable about the trip…,” Sahadi told me.
And that is true. There was nothing remarkable about the trip. It was what horses do every day in America and around the world: They get on vans and they travel from place to place for an array of functional reasons. To race, to rest, to retire. It is manifestly ordinary. But the rest of that morning in Southern California, and the days and weeks that followed, were not ordinary; they were apocalyptic.
In the evening before McCarthy’s (and others’) horses moved, a wildfire had started in the steep hills above and to the west of Santa Anita; eight hours earlier, a larger fire had exploded in Pacific Palisades, dominating cable news coverage and stretching emergency resources. By late night, the second fire was encroaching on residential areas and was ominously visible from the racetrack. Fed by hurricane-force Santa Ana winds, it would become the Eaton Fire (for Eaton Canyon, where it started), the second-most destructive wildfire in California history, wiping out more than 9,000 structures, most in Altadena, and upending daily life for what is likely to be years. It would kill 18 people before containment.
Many track employees stayed overnight on the grounds, not only to help oversee emergency operations but because many of their own homes were endangered. McCarthy’s family had left their Altadena home in the fire’s path and moved into a hotel, but McCarthy slept only fitfully and got up at 4 a.m. to check on his house before going to work. By early morning, as the van was loaded, the winds had ebbed slightly, but remained fierce. “A crazy wind,” says Sahadi. “And there were embers flying around.” There was a justifiable sense of uncertainty, and down some neural pathways from there, fear.
Among the total of 17 horses (two on another van) that McCarthy sent away was a handsome and well-balanced three-year-old bay colt named Journalism. He had raced three times before the fire — losing a maiden six-furlong race that was too short for his long stride and big body, breaking his maiden at a mile on Nov. 17, and then just 27 days later, winning the 1 1/16-mile Los Alamos Futurity by a widening and dominant 3 1/2 lengths. It is a weary narrative tool to explain a successful racehorse’s story as a “journey.” Where he was born (and who were his parents), where he was sold and then taught to run, where he landed in the sprawling ecosystem of the sport, and under whose ownership and in what trainer’s hands. We do this in large part because horses cannot tell their own stories.
Today, Journalism is the favorite to win Saturday’s 151st Kentucky Derby, to the extent that any horse can be favored to win a 20-horse rodeo witnessed by more than 150,000 raucous partygoers at a distance of 1 1/4 miles, which none of them have run previously and most will never run again. The longer view: Journalism was moved from his home in the midst of a natural disaster, and then returned, just as tens of thousands of Californians hope to do. As North Carolinians and Floridians are still doing from hurricanes and their side effects. Journalism has plowed through disruption, as millions of Americans attempt to do every day in these disquieting times of ours. His name is symbolic of that disruption, a once-trusted institution, splintered.
His journey is our journey.
On a mid-April morning, I drove my rental car north out of downtown Pasadena on Lake Ave., across the border into Altadena and up into the hillside streets most damaged by the Eaton Fire. It is part of small-j journalism to observe the detritus of tragedy where possible and to not accept others’ descriptions of painful landscapes. It can be unpleasant work, tinged with guilt from voyeuristically co-opting pain. In January of 2007, I rode with New Orleans Saints’ quarterback Drew Brees through the city’s Lower Ninth Ward, which had been disproportionately punished by Hurricane Katrina. Six years later, in May of 2013, I spent a week in Moore, Oklahoma, with members of a high school football team after an F5 tornado leveled many of their neighborhoods. It’s not possible to experience what took place, but it’s important to see it.
So it is in Altadena today. Many streets are, as Michael McCarthy said to me, “just chimneys.” Chimneys and foundations. And melted cars. The destruction goes on until blocks turn into miles, each empty parcel representing a family or some other collection of humans. Inexplicably, the carnage is intermittently paused by a home that was seemingly untouched, as if the fire hiccupped. Work crews are everywhere, and will be for a very long time. Amid the rubble, trees have blossomed in vibrant shades of green, insisting. From the grandstand at Santa Anita, mountains stretch horizontally across the field of vision; the areas toward Altadena and Sierra Madre, recently brown and black, are now dotted with green spots. That is vegetation, not residences. But life.
McCarthy’s home survived, although many nearby did not. It will be at least late summer before McCarthy, 54, and his wife and teenaged daughter, can return. And of course, even then, it won’t be the same. It won’t ever be the same. McCarthy was raised in Altadena, and after more than a decade living the successful but itinerant life of a trainer, he came back and started his own operation in 2014. As we stood outside his barn and talked, and then walked to the track and talked some more, he pointed in one direction and then another, and another. “My parents live across the street over there,” he said. “My in-laws’ house backs up to the turf course. We’re over there on the hill.” He could hear race calls from his childhood yard.
His middle school friends were the sons and daughters of horse trainers, so there he went, from mucking stalls and hot walking, on up the ladder until he was a trusted assistant for Hall of Famer and two-time Derby winner Todd Pletcher. His life unfolds in the 24/7/365 rhythm of the racetrack, and now there is more with the aftermath of the fire. He is thankful that his home survived, but that brings challenges of its own, with severe smoke damage. He struggles with the contrary emotion that those who lost their homes entirely can find a fresher start. But he is also self-aware. When I characterize his situation as “Pain,” he corrects me: “Not pain, inconvenience.” These are degrees of massive upheaval; it will take time to work through it all.
To the morning of Jan. 8: McCarthy remembers winds, still howling. “Eighty or 90 miles an hour.” His thoughts: “The horses were in their environment,” McCarthy said. “They were in the corner of their stalls, which is where they go when they know something is going on. Journalism was in the back right corner, which is his place. I felt like this was the safest place for them.” But? “I did put some horses on a van, mostly horses that were sitting on a race, to make sure we didn’t upset their routine. Journalism was one of those horses.”
It was a strange time. I asked McCarthy if he feared the fire might make it all the way across the freeway and onto the track. “I didn’t,” McCarthy said. “From those mountains to right here is two-and-a-half miles, plus a huge fire break with the 210 Freeway.” Pause. “But things happen,” he said. “Is it possible for a fire to get here? I don’t want to find out. But we’ve got wells, and sprinklers. But really, I don’t want to find out.”
Journalism spent four days at San Luis Rey. It is another layer to this story that the eventual Kentucky Derby favorite was sent from one place upended by fire to another. On Dec. 7, 2017, the Lilac Fire in North San Diego County tore through San Luis Rey Downs and killed 46 horses, severely burned trainers Martine Bellocq and Joe Herrick and left many other deep scars. (To know more about that event, please read the Eclipse Award-winning story my friend, Bryce Miller, wrote two years after the fire. Bryce died of cancer last March at age 56. Apologies for that detour, but this is a story about living with and moving past all kinds of pain.)
On January 12, Journalism came back to Santa Anita. Sahadi remembers both his departure and his return. “He travels like a champ,” she said. “Loads, unloads, he leads us. No problem, like he’s saying, ‘I’ll walk right on there for you.’ Some horses are fearful. Not him. All business.”
McCarthy said, “He came home and fell right back into his routine. No problem.”
Journalism is the son of two-time Horse of the Year Curlin, who McCarthy helped Pletcher defeat in the 2007 Belmont Stakes with the filly Rags to Riches; and of a mare, Mopotism, sired by Uncle Mo, a Pletcher colt who was scratched from the field on the day before the 2011 Kentucky Derby. McCarthy was there for that, too. The human side of racing can sometimes seem as familial as the equine piece. Journalism came back to the races this year on the first day of March and won the San Felipe Stakes by 1 3/4 lengths; the third-place finisher was Rodriguez, the Bob Baffert-trained colt who went on to win the Wood Memorial prep race, and would have been among the Derby contenders had he not been scratched Thursday afternoon.
McCarthy’s home survived, although many nearby did not. It will be at least late summer before McCarthy, 54, and his wife and teenaged daughter, can return. And of course, even then, it won’t be the same. It won’t ever be the same. McCarthy was raised in Altadena, and after more than a decade living the successful but itinerant life of a trainer, he came back and started his own operation in 2014. As we stood outside his barn and talked, and then walked to the track and talked some more, he pointed in one direction and then another, and another. “My parents live across the street over there,” he said. “My in-laws’ house backs up to the turf course. We’re over there on the hill.” He could hear race calls from his childhood yard.
His middle school friends were the sons and daughters of horse trainers, so there he went, from mucking stalls and hot walking, on up the ladder until he was a trusted assistant for Hall of Famer and two-time Derby winner Todd Pletcher. His life unfolds in the 24/7/365 rhythm of the racetrack, and now there is more with the aftermath of the fire. He is thankful that his home survived, but that brings challenges of its own, with severe smoke damage. He struggles with the contrary emotion that those who lost their homes entirely can find a fresher start. But he is also self-aware. When I characterize his situation as “Pain,” he corrects me: “Not pain, inconvenience.” These are degrees of massive upheaval; it will take time to work through it all.
To the morning of Jan. 8: McCarthy remembers winds, still howling. “Eighty or 90 miles an hour.” His thoughts: “The horses were in their environment,” McCarthy said. “They were in the corner of their stalls, which is where they go when they know something is going on. Journalism was in the back right corner, which is his place. I felt like this was the safest place for them.” But? “I did put some horses on a van, mostly horses that were sitting on a race, to make sure we didn’t upset their routine. Journalism was one of those horses.”
It was a strange time. I asked McCarthy if he feared the fire might make it all the way across the freeway and onto the track. “I didn’t,” McCarthy said. “From those mountains to right here is two-and-a-half miles, plus a huge fire break with the 210 Freeway.” Pause. “But things happen,” he said. “Is it possible for a fire to get here? I don’t want to find out. But we’ve got wells, and sprinklers. But really, I don’t want to find out.”
Journalism spent four days at San Luis Rey. It is another layer to this story that the eventual Kentucky Derby favorite was sent from one place upended by fire to another. On Dec. 7, 2017, the Lilac Fire in North San Diego County tore through San Luis Rey Downs and killed 46 horses, severely burned trainers Martine Bellocq and Joe Herrick and left many other deep scars. (To know more about that event, please read the Eclipse Award-winning story my friend, Bryce Miller, wrote two years after the fire. Bryce died of cancer last March at age 56. Apologies for that detour, but this is a story about living with and moving past all kinds of pain.)
On January 12, Journalism came back to Santa Anita. Sahadi remembers both his departure and his return. “He travels like a champ,” she said. “Loads, unloads, he leads us. No problem, like he’s saying, ‘I’ll walk right on there for you.’ Some horses are fearful. Not him. All business.”
McCarthy said, “He came home and fell right back into his routine. No problem.”
Journalism is the son of two-time Horse of the Year Curlin, who McCarthy helped Pletcher defeat in the 2007 Belmont Stakes with the filly Rags to Riches; and of a mare, Mopotism, sired by Uncle Mo, a Pletcher colt who was scratched from the field on the day before the 2011 Kentucky Derby. McCarthy was there for that, too. The human side of racing can sometimes seem as familial as the equine piece. Journalism came back to the races this year on the first day of March and won the San Felipe Stakes by 1 3/4 lengths; the third-place finisher was Rodriguez, the Bob Baffert-trained colt who went on to win the Wood Memorial prep race, and would have been among the Derby contenders had he not been scratched Thursday afternoon.
In the April 5 Santa Anita Derby, California’s premier Derby prep race, Journalism was twice cut off by other horses in the running of the race, incidents that would discourage many horses, and went on to win. It was harrowing, but instructive. “Love that he overcame that adversity,” said McCarthy. “He just doesn’t get discouraged.” Metaphor alert. And this: Both prep races were run at Santa Anita, against the backdrop of burned mountains in the nascent stages of recovery.
Now we’re standing in Journalism’s stall No. 40, McCarthy near the colt’s nose, which is pressed against the wooden barrier at the back of the stall; and me, closer to the other end. Journalism stands 16 hands and nearly two inches tall at the base of his neck, where such measurements are taken. He is a big horse, an inch shorter than Secretariat (just for reference, calm down), but big does not always mean fast, and almost never means nimble. (But Journalism is verifiably fast and has shown he can recover from trouble, if not avoid it altogether.) Straw is gathered around Journalism’s feet like a blanket, nearly a foot deep. McCarthy, smitten, ticks off meaningful qualities. “Big powerful neck, sloping shoulder, thickness around the cannon bone, like a runner with big quads.” As McCarthy talks, Journalism shifts his right eye in our direction for reasons entirely unknown.
We don’t know what he thinks. But we do know where he has been.
