‘Undercover Boss’ tribute race part of Arlington Park opening

April 30, 2010 by admin · View Comments
Filed under: Churchill Downs 

Since becoming a jockey valet in 1988, Kenny Rice has spent a lot of time in the Arlington Park winner’s circle.

His job has him there often to help collect the riders’ equipment when they dismount their horses after each race.

But when Arlington Park opens its doors to start its 2010 meet today, Rice will be in the winner’s circle for a very special moment.

Thanks to an episode of the CBS television series “Undercover Boss,” there will be a race run today in honor of Rice’s daughter Meghan Samantha, who was born with a heart defect and died in March 2009 at the age of 20.

While going undercover to work with Rice on his job at Arlington Park last summer, Churchill Downs Chief Operating Officer Bill Carstanjen bonded with the valet’s story about his daughter during the taping of the show.

Carstanjen noticed the picture of Rice’s daughter and then realized it was in memoriam.

Read the full story on Daily Herald

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On ‘Undercover Boss,’ Churchill Downs Exec Horses Around, Gets Hosed

March 18, 2010 by admin · View Comments
Filed under: Churchill Downs 

On Sunday, CBS’s (CBS) Undercover Boss took a turn around the track with Bill Carstanjen, COO of Churchill Downs (CHDN). As the University of California–Berkeley and Columbia–educated Carstanjen cared for horses, helped dress a jockey, and tried his hand at the bugle, the show gave viewers an in-depth look at the inside workings of the horse-racing world.

While some previous “undercover bosses” threw themselves wholeheartedly into their entry-level jobs, Carstanjen is far less engaged — in fact, three of his five supervisors question his effectiveness and work ethic. Gillian, a horse trainer and his first coworker, notes his skittishness with the horses and his seeming inability to complete the tasks she gives him. After he soaks Gillian while bathing a horse, she tells the camera crew, “Right now, Bill’s future is not looking the greatest. He just has a lot to learn.”

At Arlington Park, Carstanjen works the night shift with Denise, an $8-per-hour employee who commutes 90 minutes to clean luxury suites. After showing Carstanjen the ropes, Denise grows visibly agitated at his slow, awkward progress: “Billy wouldn’t be good at this. He’s just not cleaning material. He’s slowing me down tremendously.”

Carstanjen’s inefficiency becomes an even bigger problem when he works with Kenny, a jockey’s valet. The undercover boss is quickly overwhelmed by the quick pace of the job, and ultimately, his supervisor has to give up on educating him, choosing instead to simply tell the hapless exec every single thing he needs to do. Later, when Carstanjen wanders off in search of Kenny, both become useless as they spend minutes wandering around in search of each other.

Of course, there are also up moments. In his second job, blowing the bugle, Carstanjen’s painful fumbling offers comic relief. His total lack of musical experience, paired with disturbingly insufficient training, yields a bugle call that could best be described as tragic.

…

When Carstanjen presents his big reveal to his gimlet-eyed, well-dressed execs, the upshot of his argument is that Churchill Downs needs to “get a little bit personal” with its employees. But he doesn’t seem to sway his fellow suits — and it’s unclear if Carstanjen himself is swayed.

Staying true to the show’s formula, he gives nice, mildly lucrative surprises to all of his former supervisors, but there’s little question that Churchill Downs will continue to squeeze every penny possible out of its workers, many of whom will have to struggle to put food on the table. If the purpose of Undercover Boss is to show the transformative power of working with the great unwashed, the Bill Carstanjen episode was a sad failure.

See full article from DailyFinance.

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