A Horse-Drawn Life at Pimlico
For Stable Hands, the Backstretch Can Be a Meager but Happy Home

By Steve Hendrix
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, May 17, 2008

Darryl Scott is every inch a city guy, born and raised in the neighborhoods around Baltimore's Pimlico Race Course. But there is a difference between Scott and the fellows he hangs out with at the takeout joints and liquor stores along Park Heights Avenue, just outside the track's main gate: They love the races; he lives for the horses.

In fact, he lives with them, in a tiny room in one of the training stables that line the backstretch of the track. The 44-year-old is one of 120 grooms, hot walkers and other stable hands who live in the Pimlico barns, sleeping above the costly animals they care for seven days a week, four seasons a year.

At most race tracks, tending the ponies has become a profession made up almost entirely of Latino immigrants. But Pimlico, an unlikely patch of inner-city horse country, still draws heavily on surrounding Baltimore for its barn workers. And Scott, for one, is equally at home on both sides of the high chain-link fence that separates the stables from the streets.

"Look at this, a loose horse," Scott said blithely one morning last week when a panicky, untethered thoroughbred came running out from between the barns. Instead of backing away, Scott walked directly toward the skittish animal, arms outstretched, an urban horse whisperer.

"Shhh, shhh, shhh -- want a peppermint?" he cooed, crinkling his cigarette pack to make the animal think a treat was being unwrapped.

Instantly the horse settled, slowed and let Scott get a hand under its harness. "Whose horse is this?" Scott called as heads poked from surrounding barn doors to see the action.

This track-side community, known as the backstretch, will be largely invisible to today's crowded grandstand, a distant glimpse of barn roofs above the thundering blur of jockey colors as the Preakness runners come out of the first turn. But the backstretch is an essential and fabled corner of the racing world, home to the resident army of low-paid workers that keep high-end horses ready to run.

"Horses have to be fed and walked every single day of the year," said Donna Chenkin, the head of Anna House, a family support program for stable workers at Belmont Park in Elmont, N.Y. The child-care center she runs opens each day at 5 a.m., when the horses are ready for a morning gallop and their stalls are ready for a good mucking out. "If these people weren't living in the backstretch, there would be no racing."

Most major tracks provide trainers with free barns for their horses and free rooms for their stable hands as a way of ensuring a stock of thoroughbreds available to race. For many of the workers, it's a lifelong career.

"I've been here 28 years," said Scott, squatting under the massive belly of a chestnut horse, gently wrapping a spindly shin. He was introduced to the backstretch by his father, who worked here. He was taught the trade by an uncle and pitches hay side-by-side with his brother Harvey, also a groom. He has worked occasionally as an electrician and carpenter, but has always returned to the barns. "I could make more money doing something else, but if you love horses the way I do, you're going to stay."

If backstretch life is a labor of love, it isn't one of comfort. The chores begin in the dark and go on in all weathers: shoveling endless loads of straw and manure, leading just-galloped horses on cool-down walks, hosing them down, feeding, watering, brushing them.

In exchange, grooms usually earn about $100 a week per horse they take care of, and they live in housing that is free but nearly monk-like in its austerity. Scott makes about $500 a week and sleeps in a second-floor cinder block room with little standing room left among the bed, couch, TV and two cats. The communal bathroom is several doors down the open-air balcony.

But there are other perks. By tradition, owners tip the backstretch when one of their horses comes in a winner, which can mean, depending on the purse, an extra $50 to $500 in a groom's pocket. Some trainers race "barn horses," animals essentially owned by the backstretch workers who then split their winnings.

Preakness day is a particular boon to Pimlico stable hands. Soon after the massive crowd clears out, backstretch workers will scour the infield for left-behind treasure: watches, coolers, lawn chairs, entire cases of beer. Scott once found an unclaimed betting ticket worth $800.

Maryland's biggest race is a hot time on the backstretch, where workers have a unbeatable view of the, well, backstretch. They can't see the finish line at all, which is on the grandstand side of the track, but that doesn't stop them from partying on their barn balconies.

"We watch the race. It's a good time for all of us together, black and Mexican," said Jaime Abena, a groom who has worked at Pimlico since 2004. "We put some money together to buy food and beer after the morning work is done."

On normal days, eating can be one of the challenges of backstretch life. Cooking is forbidden in the rooms, but there is a short-order kitchen a few barns away that closes after lunch. For dinner, there is Pimlico Chicken and the other takeout places outside the fence. But crime in the neighborhood keeps many workers inside the gates.

"I go shopping for some of the guys, get their beer and cigarettes," Scott said. "I've lived in Baltimore all my life. I'm not scared out there. They just sit in here and drink."

Pimlico's backstretch, like other tracks', is known for hard drinking, and worse. One of Scott's fellow grooms, Danny Marchant, was critically injured when he was stabbed by two assailants who jumped the fence before dawn one morning in 2006. There's pettier crime, too, including the odd fistfight between grooms who work for competing stables in the same barn.

"Mostly we get along great, but it's like we're playing football and all sharing the same locker room," said trainer Lori Testerman, Scott's boss, who keeps a dozen horses at Pimlico. "The guys can get intense."

Overall, the hard-knock life of the barns has given the backstretch a reputation as the permanent underclass of the racing hierarchy. In response, the Maryland Thoroughbred Horsemen's Association, a group representing owners and trainers, offers a collection of benefits to the backstretch employees at three tracks in the state, including health centers staffed by a rotating physician, drug and alcohol counseling, language classes and pension programs.

"It's like its own world back here," said Testerman, who is co-chairman of the group's Pimlico Backstretch Committee. "We have our problems and it drives you crazy sometimes, but ultimately the racetrack takes care of a lot of people."

Offering programs is one thing. Getting workers to participate is another. Scott, for example, said he hasn't bothered to register each year for the pension ever since he interrupted his Pimlico tenure with a stint in Florida several years ago.

"We put up posters, we go barn to barn, we do everything we can to get people to sign up" for the pension, said Wayne Wright, MTHA executive secretary. "It's free money! I tell you, some of them take better care of the horses than they do themselves."