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Backstretch Welfare Programs

By Ken Snyder
First Published: 08 April 2009 - Issue Number: 12

Hard by the gap on the backstretch near a clocker’s stand where trainers gather to kibitz, swap gossip and tell jokes, the view from the front window is a postcard in real life. In the mornings, horses in workouts can be followed around the clubhouse turn down the backstretch; there is the traffic of horses entering and leaving the backside; and behind it all are the twin spires and grandstand.
It is the best office, in the opinion of many, for what has been done within its walls. From 7 a.m. to 1 p.m. hotwalkers, grooms, and exercise riders come in for coffee, salted peanuts from a bowl that is seemingly never empty, and talk with Linda Doane, on-track liaison for Lifestyle. The talks – what those in counseling and those with addictions call “check-ins” – are the lifeblood of recovery from drug, alcohol and gambling addictions. Other backstretch workers come in for help with legal problems or immigration issues.
The demise of the office is probably two years overdue. Churchill Downs, which initiated the program in 1989, cut funding in half three years ago then eliminated it altogether a year later. The Morton Center, a Louisville rehabilitation program with offices throughout the state, stepped in to fund the program from then until now.
Lifestyle’s closing should be kept in context: another backstretch worker assistance program, T.A.C.K. (Thoroughbred Addiction Council of Kentucky), will continue to operate at Churchill Downs and other Kentucky racetracks. It serves not just hotwalkers, grooms, exercise riders and assistant trainers like Lifestyle, but trainers themselves, jockeys, mutuel clerks and others on the racetrack with a need.
Given T.A.C.K.’s existence, Lifestyle’s closing isn’t, perhaps, totally catastrophic, but it should serve as a wake-up call to the industry. New York’s Backstretch Employee Service Team (BEST), a marquee program in the racing industry, is addressing what director C...

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