McCarthy has an outstanding strike rate in Australian jumps racing, including winning four steeplechases and a hurdle race on their modern-day jumping great Stern Idol.
As tends to be the case with jumps jockeys, though, McCarthy’s career has been anything but plain sailing.
He broke three bones in his neck in a fall in a jumping race in Virginia in the United States in 2020, and an injury last year ruled him out of the second half of last season.
However, the 42-year-old returned to the jumping big time when piloting New Zealand-bred jumper Duke Of Bedford to win the famed A$150,000 ($163,700) Brierly Steeplechase at Warrnambool in April.
West Coast is the $3 second-favourite for the National, with Jesko the $1.80 top elect in what the TAB is pricing as a two-horse race.
“I am looking forward to getting over there and getting on him,” says McCarthy.
“He is a big, strong horse ... the weight shouldn’t bother him and he jumps well.
“He is one of the horses I have watched quite a few times on television since I got out here to Australia so it is a real pleasure to have a chance to ride him.”
The National meeting is shaping as a huge centrepiece for the jumping season: not only is West Coast trying something that may never be equalled in a record $200,000 version of the Grand National, but his stablemate Berry The Cash is also attempting to win the Grand National Hurdles for the third straight year.
Regular jockey Portia Matthews retains the Berry The Cash ride.
Jumps racing fans have an earlier highlight to look forward to, with six jumps races at Te Aroha on Sunday and some of the biggest fields in years carded for the jumping component of a New Zealand meeting.
There are 59 acceptors in the six jumps races at the track, which is the new home of what used to be called the Great Northerns.
Both the Great Northern Hurdles and Steeplechase have had their names changed to the not-so-catchy Great New Zealand Hurdles and Steeplechase.
The iconic races, which almost everybody is still going to refer to as the “Great Northerns” for months or even years to come, have now also been split to separate days of what is a planned jumps racing weekend for Te Aroha.
The Great New Zealand Hurdles will be held for $150,000 at Te Aroha on Friday, September 19, while the $200,000 Great New Zealand Steeplechase will headline the second day of the meeting on Sunday, September 21.
The New Zealand Jumps Racing Association will hold a function on the Saturday night in between to promote a jumps racing weekend atmosphere.
Elsewhere, Awapuni’s return to racing on their turf track has been put back two weeks.
The meeting scheduled for Saturday, August 23, will be moved after a track assessment was carried out after gallops on the surface on Tuesday.
New Zealand Thoroughbred Racing, RACE Inc (the local racing body), the Racing Integrity Board and track adviser Liam O’Keeffe were all in agreement the track would benefit from additional time.
RACE Inc and NZTR are now working towards holding the first meeting on the Awapuni turf track on Saturday, September 6, allowing further time for the track to recover after recent remediation work and to complete the remaining return-to-racing protocols.
Michael Guerin wrote his first nationally published racing articles while still in school and started writing about horse racing and the gambling industry for the Herald as a 20-year-old in 1990. He became the Herald’s Racing Editor in 1995 and covers the world’s biggest horse racing carnivals.
