The executive director of the New York-based Backstretch Employee Service Team, Nancy Underwood, is closing in on her one-year anniversary in this challenging but gratifying role.
BEST, in its 35th year as a nonprofit organization, serves the backstretch communities at Belmont Park and Saratoga Race Course in countless and meaningful ways by supporting the people who give themselves over to the demanding job of caring for the Thoroughbreds.
Underwood served as BEST's program director for the backstretch community in Saratoga for 10 years before taking on her current position in January 2024.
"Our responsibility is to make sure that we have a healthy workforce," Underwood said. "We oversee all of the medical, mental health, social services, addiction programming, and education programming. We do that in a lot of different ways."
With the holiday season in full swing, Underwood emphasized the importance of the BEST team connecting with the men and women living at Belmont Park during what can be a very isolating and lonely time of year, particularly with many of their families living outside of the country.
"The holidays and the end of the Saratoga meet are pretty similar in that things slow down for the workers," she said. "There's a lot of racing, they have demanding schedules, but when it slows down a little bit…it's the holidays, and they're making sacrifices to provide for their families, so they're not with their families."
To that end, Underwood and the BEST staff, which at the height of the racing season numbers 20, do check-ins with the community on a regular basis.
"Because it is a small community—I mean, it looks really huge from the outside, but to us, or everybody in it, it's like, 'Oh, I know that person, or that person's cousin.' We do some outreach, maybe invite them to speak with the counselor, or maybe one of our therapists is in the track kitchen and touches base with them, just saying, 'Hey, how are you?' Our job is to provide these wraparound services.
"Our ultimate goal is that we want to grow our utilization on the backstretches. We want to make sure to look at it very much like a school system," she continued. "If you have 900 beds at Belmont Park, you should know every one of the 900 residents, even if they're kind of moving around (from track to track). Some are more permanent, so you should know who their cousins are, just like at a school when a grandparent picks somebody up or there's a cousin in a different grade, you should really know them. And I think by knowing them, you can provide really great services. We're looking at improving some of those procedures of tracking people and knowing who they are."
With clinics run by outside healthcare providers on the backstretches of Belmont and Saratoga, the workers have medical care at their fingertips. BEST also provides services for outside care by arranging for appointments and transportation.
Underwood recalls a story of a backstretch worker who came to Saratoga from Kentucky to work toward the end of the racing season. Before the woman left Kentucky she had a mammogram at a mobile clinic that came to the track. The images indicated she had cancer, and it was imperative to find the woman as soon as possible. Because of BEST's symbiotic relationship with other states' backstretch employee programs, the woman was located, received treatment in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., and is now cancer-free.
BEST is funded by the New York Racing Association, New York Thoroughbred Horsemen's Association, and through charitable donations. The late Marylou Whitney, an owner/breeder and philanthropist, and her husband, John Hendrickson, who died in August, were committed benefactors of BEST. Hendrickson funded the construction of the backstretch healthcare clinic in Saratoga, which opened in 2023, as a tribute to his wife, who died in 2019. Following Whitney's death, Hendrickson continued to lend his support to a variety of initiatives, including backstretch appreciation dinners, educational programs, and social events, such as the popular bilingual bingo night.
Aron Yagoda, a third-generation horse owner and the co-chair of BEST's board of directors, said the backstretch community was gutted by the deaths of Whitney and Hendrickson, who hosted dinners on the Saratoga backstretch and often dined with the workers. Those meals were held in a tent, but two years after Whitney's death, Hendrickson funded the construction of a 5,000-square-foot permanent structure named in his late wife's honor.
Yagoda, whose grandfather and father owned horses in New York, has been coming to the races and backstretch since he was a child. He said the racetrack is unique in that most everyone feels a connection to one another because of the horses, and that the workings of the tight-knit community lends itself to the work BEST is doing.
"Here, we're like a big family. When I was a little kid I thought that the stable gate was to keep people from coming in, and now I think it's really to keep people from leaving," he said. "Whether you have a substance abuse problem or mental health issue; or even taking people to a clinic and things like that, it's amazing and really touching to see all the things Nancy and the staff at BEST do for people."
To learn more about the good BEST is doing, visit bestbackstretch.org.
