Michael McCarthy had just witnessed a display of resiliency unfold in front of him at the Preakness Stakes on Saturday when he referenced another.
“We’ll rebuild,” McCarthy told NBC in a televised interview from the wet track of Baltimore’s Pimlico Race Course, just minutes after his horse, Journalism, won the 150th running of the Triple Crown’s middle leg. “This is for Altadena.”
Journalism’s victory required a comeback of more than five lengths, an improbable run that required slipping between two horses on either side as it entered the backstretch, then furiously making up ground on leader Gosger, never taking the lead until the final strides. The route was unexpected and challenging — not all that dissimilar to what its trainer had endured since January wildfires in Southern California displaced McCarthy and his family from their home.
As flames creeped within a reported 600 feet of the walls of McCarthy’s Altadena home, he his wife and daughter left at 4:40 a.m. and checked into a hotel, The Athletic reported last month. McCarthy’s home in Altadena suffered smoke damage but ultimately survived what became known as the Eaton fire, named for a nearby canyon from which it originated and grew into a blaze that would kill 18 people. But his neighborhood was largely destroyed, as was the city where he was raised.
What remained in Altadena was “just chimneys,” McCarthy told NBC Sports last month.
Together the Eaton and nearby Palisades fire, which also ignited in early January in Pacific Palisades west of Los Angeles, and also spread via extreme winds, destroyed an estimated 16,000 structures, impacted more than 30,000 people and at an economic loss of more than $250 billion.
On the Jan. 8 morning when the fire broke out, 3-year-old Journalism was in the back right corner of its stall in a barn at Santa Anita Park in nearby Arcadia, “which is where they go when they know something is going on,” McCarthy told NBC Sports’ Tim Layden. The trainer decided to move Journalism and other horses out of the barn that day and had them driven near San Diego as a precaution.
Aron Wellman, a co-owner of Journalism, told The Athletic last month that “there were a lot of moving parts” as the fires broke out.
“The weight of the world was on Michael’s shoulders there for a bit,” he said.
When, four days later, Journalism was brought back to Santa Anita, his trainer remarked that the horse appeared unaffected by the disruption taking place around him.
It was a foreshadowing of the horse’s unflappability it used to win Saturday at Pimlico.
Considered the betting favorite to win the May 3 Kentucky Derby, Journalism finished second when it was unable to catch Sovereignty. The Derby champion was not entered at the Preakness because of the two-week turnaround. It used to be rare for a Derby champion to skip the Preakness, and thus miss out on the possibility of winning horse racing’s Triple Crown, which ends with the Belmont Stakes. Yet this year marked the third time in the last four years the Preakness field has not included the Derby winner. The trend has created a debate about whether the Triple Crown, with three races spaced apart by just two weeks, is too taxing on horses.
Only three horses in the Preakness field had also raced in the Kentucky Derby.
“I think it says a lot about him,” McCarthy said after the race. “None of these Triple Crown races are easy to get to, you certainly need the vehicle, and we had it with him.”
More from the Preakness Stakes
In a nine-horse field Saturday, Journalism sat in sixth through the backstretch of the 1 3/16-mile track, and appeared too far back to make a challenge entering the homestretch in front of the Pimlico grandstand that will soon be demolished. Yet Journalism showed why it was the pre-race favorite, with 6-5 odds, by charging to a victory.
The comeback “defied logic,” Wellman said after the race.
“I just think that this victory symbolizes so much about life,” Wellman said. “It took guts for Mike McCarthy to make this call to come here. It took guts for (jockey) Umberto Rispoli to power his way through a seemingly impossible hole, getting sideswiped and threading the needle and powering on through. And it took guts from an incredible horse to somehow will his way to victory.”
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