Kentucky's "backside workers" care for million-dollar horses on the racing circuit. This clinic takes care of them.

Seventeen years ago, Odilia Castillo, now 37, traveled from her home in Chiapas, Mexico, north to work as a "hot walker" on Kentucky's race tracks. Every morning she wakes up at 3 a.m. and heads to the track by 4 a.m. to walk the horses, who need at least 30 to 45 minutes to cool down after training. 

Castillo said she has a "connection with the horses," and that's what kept her caring for the animals — until, in 2021, she couldn't work because of a pain in her stomach. She said she didn't know what the pain was, so she went to the Kentucky Racing Health Services Center. The Louisville clinic was founded in 2005 to meet the needs of those known in the racing world as the "backside," mostly migrant workers who care for the horses who race at tracks such as Churchill Downs.

The mother of two, who is married to another racetrack worker, needed to take days off from work — a dire challenge for these laborers — many of them migrants from Mexico, Guatemala, Venezuela or other Latin American countries — who head to the tracks six days a week to help keep Kentucky's estimated $2.7 billion annual racing economy galloping. They are the hot walkers, exercise riders, grooms and farriers necessary to maintain racing form for the 238,027 horses in the state.