CTT NA TRAINER ISSUE 34_Jerkins feature.qxd 23/10/2014 00:46 Page 12
CALIFORNIA THOROUGHBRED TRAINERS
WORDS: ED GOLDEN PHOTOS: BENOIT PHOTOS, HORSEPHOTOS
S
EAN McCarthy is a rarity among trainers. He speaks in complete sentences. Here’s what he said in a post-race interview after the biggest win of his career, Majestic Harbor’s 6¼-length upset at 14-1 in the Grade I Gold Cup at Santa Anita on June 28: “It’s a great thrill, and to win a race of this caliber at Santa Anita is a dream come true for a guy growing up wanting to do what I’m doing today. I understand the magnitude of it and the history of it. I know the Gold Cup was formerly run at Hollywood Park (and won by immortals such as Seabiscuit, Noor, Citation, Swaps, Ack Ack, Affirmed, Ferdinand, Criminal Type, Cigar, Skip Away and Lava Man), but a Grade I, with a Gold Cup attached to it, is a tremendous thrill.” All that without the aid of a teleprompter. Maybe that’s why McCarthy also verbalizes his eloquence in front of the cameras on HRTV, lending his expertise to the racing network’s rapt viewers when he finds a crack in his training schedule, which, like most dedicated horsemen, consumes a gargantuan portion of his life. He has been at his “day job” for more than 30 years now, but has done so while flying under the radar. How far under? Hell, he doesn’t even warrant a biographical sketch in Southern California tracks’ media guides, and he was virtually born into the game. He won his first race under the tutelage of trainer Monty Roberts in 1987 but has been training on his own since 1994. Publicity has never been McCarthy’s top priority. Horses are. Like countless others who soldier on ponderously, step by step, day by day, to goals and dreams seldom realized, McCarthy is not vainglorious. His focus is on the health, happiness and success of horses in his care. He is among the faceless trainers who form the backbone of Thoroughbred racing and without whom the game could not survive. “I started riding horses at eight years old when my parents (his late father, Ken, and his mother, Marianne) sent me to a little dude ranch called Cloverleaf Ranch in Santa Rosa,” said McCarthy, 51, in the comfort of his tidy
08 TRAINERMAGAZINE.com ISSUE 34
Eloquent Sean McCarthy is a dedicated horseman who has been training since 1994
McCarthy comes out from under the radar tack room at Santa Anita, his trusty nine-yearold Australian Shepherd Dale splayed on the floor like he owned it. McCarthy is an avid auto racing fan, so, understandably, Dale is named for the late race car legend Dale Earnhardt, Sr., who died on the last lap of the 2001 Daytona 500.
“That camp in Santa Rosa was a like ghost town but everything surrounding it was about equestrian events,” said McCarthy. “I rode every day there and got pretty good at it. “I was born in San Francisco and raised in Foster City, which is on a peninsula about two miles from where Bay Meadows stood, so I