A Dangerous Job

Noah Adams reports on the starting gate crew at Churchill Downs:

Scott Jordan is the starter at Churchill Downs — the guy who pushes the button to open the gates. He directs the start crew and looks for men with experience, agility and alertness. "It's a dangerous job," he says.
Like when the horses are led into the gate, the rear doors shut, and the crew member must stay right there, in the stall, with the horse and the jockey.
"You're in that starting gate, and all [that's] there is steel wrapped around you everywhere; you got a 1,200-pound horse in there, trying to keep him calm before that race starts," Jordan says. "Things happen."
Blankets make some horses feel secure in the gate. They're fastened with Velcro and fly off at the start of the race. That's just the beginning of the tricks the start crew uses to quiet jittery horses.
Out on the track, crew member Jim Douglas shows off steel corners of the starting gate, which can irritate the horses sometimes. "Some of them will kind of lay over, and they'll hit this area here, the corner," he says.
"They'll get to doing what we call 'goosing' — feels like something is biting and biting and biting — and they'll get to jumping," he says. "We give them some pads, where it keeps their hips more square, and they actually stand up better."

That would be an amazingly frustrating job.  When a horse won't load, or even worse, false starts, I would be getting so mad at the horse.  Unfortunately, they know that and respond in a way to make you madder.  Then you crawl up in that tiny space with a jacked up horse. No thanks.  And the Derby is even worse.  The biggest crowd of the year, and 20 horses to load. That would just suck.