ARCADIA, Calif. – In the nearly seven years since he went out on his own with just a single horse, trainer Michael McCarthy has built up one of the strongest barns on the West Coast. And though he’s won plenty of significant races, including the Breeders’ Cup Dirt Mile and Pegasus World Cup with City of Light, his current group might be his deepest yet. From a roster of 45 horses here at Santa Anita, McCarthy has four – nearly 10 percent of the barn – heading to Lexington, Ky, this week for Breeders’ Cup races Friday and Saturday at Keeneland. He has Rombauer in the Juvenile on Friday, then comes back Saturday with Speech in the Filly and Mare Sprint, Rushie in the Dirt Mile, and Ce Ce in the Distaff. “We’re staying afloat,” McCarthy cracked. :: BREEDERS’ CUP 2020: See DRF’s special section with top contenders, odds, comments, news, and more for each division That response is a brief window into McCarthy. He can be buttoned-up when interviewed on camera, downright hilarious when he lets his guard down, with a sense of humor that gravitates toward, as he said, “all the cinematic masterpieces – ‘Animal House,’ ‘Caddyshack,’ all those Harold Ramis-Bill Murray films.” He’s rightly proud of what he’s accomplished and places high demands on himself, but is the first to take self-deprecating shots when he comes up short, like his attempt to get a college degree, a casualty of majoring in racetrack while attending Cal Poly Pomona. “I was a fifth-year sophomore,” he said. McCarthy, 49, first became interested in racing through his parents, who are fans and took their sons to Santa Anita after moving into this area from Ohio when McCarthy was 6. Like many students at Arcadia High School, McCarthy had the track as a frequent weekend destination as a teen. McCarthy also is a sensational golfer, with a handicap in the single digits, and though he’ll admit “I would have liked to have pursued a career in golf in some capacity,” the track held an even deeper hold. He initially worked as a hotwalker and groom for trainers like Walter Greenman, John O’Hara, and Randy Winick, then was an assistant with Doug Peterson and Ben Cecil before getting hired by Todd Pletcher, for whom he worked for more than 11 years. Though he oversaw a string of Pletcher’s runners in California early in his tenure – and sent out Rags to Riches to a Grade 1 victory in the 2007 Las Virgenes while Pletcher was on a suspension – McCarthy worked largely in Florida, Kentucky, and New York while employed by Pletcher. McCarthy got married in 2009 to the former Erin McNamara, a school friend he reconnected with as an adult, and in 2011 they had a daughter, Stella. “I enjoyed the position, the places I got to go, the horses I got to work with, but as time went on, starting a family, it became harder and harder to be away from my family,” McCarthy said. He returned full time to California, with his ability to build his business organically aided by Erin having a successful career as an investment banker. “Having a household with two incomes is a fortunate situation these days,” McCarthy said. The job still requires plenty of travel, and with that came one significant challenge earlier this year. Following a trip to Arkansas in May, during which McCarthy felt the passengers and cabin crew of his commercial flights home were inattentive to the coronavirus pandemic, McCarthy felt ill and subsequently tested positive for COVID-19. He isolated from his wife and daughter for more than two weeks by quarantining at the nearby home of a relative who was out of town for an extended period, and checked in with the barn by telephone during that time. “It was uncomfortable, but manageable,” McCarthy said of his convalescence. Ce Ce’s victories in the Grade 1 Apple Blossom and Beholder Mile were the highlights of the first half of the year for McCarthy. Since July, Speech has won the Grade 1 Ashland, Rushie won the Grade 2 Pat Day Mile, and Rombauer was second in the Grade 1 American Pharoah. Another stable star is the multiple graded stakes-winning 3-year-old turf horse Smooth Like Strait, who is bypassing the Breeders’ Cup and heading to the Grade 1 Hollywood Derby later this month at Del Mar. :: Play the Breeders’ Cup with DRF! Visit our Breeders’ Cup shop for Packages, PPs, Clocker Reports, Betting Strategies, and more McCarthy would love to have his Breeders’ Cup runners emulate City of Light, whose Dirt Mile win in 2018 he calls “the most satisfying” of his career. “It’s racing’s championship day,” he said. Victories by any of them would add to a record-setting year for McCarthy. Even with the interruptions caused by the pandemic, McCarthy already has set a single-season personal best for victories, and he’s gaining ground on his personal best for earnings, set in 2019, when City of Light captured the Pegasus in his final start for the fourth Grade 1 win of his career. “I’m happy with the direction things are heading,” he said. So he’s got that goin’ for him, which is nice.