PBS Show Portrays Life of the Backstretch Worker

The show “BACKSIDE: The Unseen Hands of Horse Racing” begins at the breakfast table as a quiet middle-aged Hispanic man is slowly eating his breakfast. Then the camera pans to his clock. It reads 1:56. The message is clear: even at this hour, this is a man who has to be somewhere. He must be dedicated to his job, no matter how difficult it may be.

That message resonates throughout the documentary, which debuted Monday and is part of PBS's Infinite Lens Series. For the next hour or so, the viewer is introduced to a number of workers on the backstretch at Churchill Downs and follows them through their daily routines. Each one is different. Each one is the same. They work hard, work virtually every day, they don't complain, and they want to do their job well. And every one of them makes up a vital, though underexposed, part of the industry.

“To me, they just aren't horses,” one groom says. “They are my coworkers.”

That's what makes “BACKSIDE” go and makes this a documentary that is welcoming in that it is non-judgmental. It never tries to portray the backstretch worker as a victim or a group that is exploited. Rather, it just tells their story, tells what they do. The viewer is sure to get it: that without these workers, the sport would grind to a halt.

You never get to know any of their names. There is very little dialogue. You're more than six minutes into the show before you hear any of them speak, and the first one to do so is not Hispanic but an aging African-American with flowing grey locks and beard. We learn that he laments the fact that so few Blacks work in racing anymore, that he was introduced to the backstretch by his father, also a longtime track worker, and that he once “took care” of Risen Star.

“It is beautiful out here too, huh, homie,” he says to a co-worker.

He is clearly enjoying his day.

The documentary quickly pivots to the many Hispanics at the track, who make up the vast majority of the workforce.  With little to no background noise, we watch them unload horses off of a van, wrap legs with poultice and bandages, walk them around the shedrow, bring the horses to and from the races, and just about everything else that is part of their routine.

The backstretch is a city unto itself and it is a city that is dominated by Latinos and their culture. That may be why the project piqued the interest of filmmakers, Mexican immigrant Raul O. Paz-Pastrana, Puerto Rican anthropologist Patricia Alvarez Astacio, and Colombia-American Gabriella Garcia-Pardo.

We watch the close-knit community gather for soccer games played in the Churchill infield. There are scenes of grooms and hotwalkers taking English lessons and of a gathering to honor the Virgin of Guadalupe,  a revered apparition of the Virgin Mary. The celebration continues with a group happily dancing to Cumbia–a soulful, accordion-driven genre often described as the “Latin American Blues.”

A large group gathers on the backstretch for a barbecue and to watch the 2022 running of the GI Kentucky Derby. They don't go to the betting windows, but each one puts up $5 or $6 dollars, which goes into a pool, presumably with the person picking the winning horse taking home the prize. No one has the winner, the impossible-to-predict Rich Strike (Keen Ice).

The one thing that is missing from the documentary is the perspective of the trainers who employ those we meet along the way. Certainly, it would have been easy to find several who could say how important the workers are and how much they are appreciated. Perhaps, though, that was done on purpose, so as not to shift the focus away from its intended purpose.

The narrative might also have been helped by some discussion of the hours the job requires, that their days can start in the early morning and stretch through the last race of the day, and that, for most, there is no such thing as a day off. That they are paid little (the minium wage in Kentucky is $7.25 an hour) is also not brought up.

But the filmmakers wrap up the story nicely at the end, posting a graphic that shows the lyrics of the song “The Workers Song,” written by Ed Pickford. It reads: “this one is for the workers who toil night and day, by hand and by brain, to earn your pay.”