Flatter: Anatomy of an interview with Churchill Downs CEO

A funny thing happened on my way out of a 45-minute conversation this week with Bill Carstanjen. The chitchat afterward was more about what we did not discuss.

“You sent me general topics, and you didn’t even cover all those topics,” Carstanjen said. “I can’t remember what you forgot, but you kind of took it easy on me.”

The big boss at Churchill Downs Inc. does not do interviews all that often. He might pop up on CNBC after an earnings report or local TV in Louisville for a special occasion, like a certain horse race every spring.

Ron Flatter Racing Pod with Bill Carstanjen.

This interview for my podcast was more comprehensive. At least that was the goal. So was the desire to be fair but not necessarily easy.

“I know people out there probably want very specific hard answers to difficult questions like HISA or whatever,” Carstanjen said, “but we’re just a collection of people that try to do the best we can and just try to hold ourselves to a standard of meeting our customers’ expectations.”

We did talk about HISA and its oversight of the sport and its demand for transparency and its ever-rising cost. We talked about the dichotomy of CDI pouring money into racing in Kentucky and Virginia and its 2021 closing of Arlington Park. We talked about the timing of this summer’s ending of the three-year suspension of Hall of Fame trainer Bob Baffert.

The interview conducted in a fourth-floor conference room at CDI corporate headquarters in Louisville was several weeks and really years in the making. It came together when I threw a Hail Mary on a visit to Colonial Downs last month for Arlington Million day.

Right after Virginia governor Glenn Youngkin proclaimed that the track owned by CDI would host a Kentucky Derby prep next March, I exchanged pleasantries with Carstanjen just as I had 12 months earlier on Million day.

A year ago we exchanged dad jokes. This time I got some acknowledgement of my having broken the story that morning about the governor’s announcement.

Figuring the timing was right and with all the subtlety of a racetrack bugler in a public library, I boldly asked Carstanjen, “When are you going to do my podcast?”

As his lieutenants stood within earshot, Carstanjen said, “I’d love to.”

Stunned in August. Driving to CDI HQ in September. Careful what I ask for.

In nearly seven years of doing the Ron Flatter Racing Pod every Friday for 394 episodes including pop-ups, I have talked to 421 different people in 1,040 interviews. The one thing I usually tell everyone kind enough to be my guest, especially those who want to know the subject matter ahead of time, is that I will know my first question. After that I will let the conversation be my guide.

Even for the most reticent of guests, this has worked far more often than it has not. But there are not that many guests who agree to sit down with me for most of an hour. And not that many guests who are in charge of a wildly successful company that hosts one of the most anticipated annual events in the society of sport and American culture.

Carstanjen put absolutely no restrictions on this week’s interview. All he asked for through one of his team members was an idea of the topics I might raise. When I learned he was clearing out an 11 a.m.-noon block in his day planner, that was my cue to make sure I had done my homework.

Let me be frank here. Among the 1,039 other podcast interviews I have done, there have been a few that I mailed in. Like the horseplayer who is down to one last race late Saturday afternoon and $10 in the ADW, I might have done some quick ’capping a time or two when I telephoned a suddenly booked guest to discuss a mid-winter Grade 3.

One of the first audio interviews I ever did came about 50 years ago in high school, when I was assigned the task of speaking for 15 minutes with the vice principal. With a beast of a tape recorder rolled in on a cart from the audio-visual center, I nervously went into Mr. Cranston’s office armed with a sheet full of questions that might as well have been catechisms.

In hindsight the interview that was more scripted than a fixed 1950s quiz show was a disaster. I was 1,000 times more rigid than Tom Brady was last weekend on Fox. That day as a teenager, I learned that pre-written conversations or even half-conversations were a complete waste of time.

Talking points, however, were a whole nuther matter. So was the discipline of listening, something my father did far better than I. When the apple fell from that tree, it ricocheted a long way.

Over time, a long time, I disciplined myself to listen and engage in a dialogue rather than run a conveyor belt of planned questions. Jack Paar, whose “Tonight” show preceded Carson and Leno and O’Brien and Leno again and Fallon, was a mentor for a generation of professional questioners. Thanks to old video, he still is for me.

“Don’t do interviews,” he said. “Interviews are boring. Make it a conversation.”

That was my goal with Carstanjen, and I believe that was the result. What was different for this conversation, though, was the sheet of paper I had folded before me with all my homework. Old folks like me will remember William F. Buckley and his rolled-up scroll of notes. I looked at mine three times in the 45 minutes.

First I looked to see if I had the CDI stock price correct. Later I wanted to make sure I had covered all the pertinent bases of the corporate portfolio. The last time was to read back a quote that Carstanjen gave to the Los Angeles Times in 2019 about the legislation that would become HISA.

At the end of the 45 minutes, and after the recording software was stopped, I looked at CDI executives Gary Palmisano and Tonya Abeln. They sat about 10 feet away from Carstanjen and me just to observe silently. This is not unusual in such settings. Ask anyone who interviews Harris and Trump.

Immediately the chatting turned to what we did not talk about. Computer-assisted wagering. The shrinking foal crop.

My eyes widened in recollection. After I got back to my home office, I finally looked at the sheet of paper again. The idea of bringing the Breeders’ Cup back to Churchill Downs also was on the list of unasked questions. And the relationship between sports betting and racing. And penny breakage. And Louisiana’s lax medication enforcement. And turf trouble at Churchill.

Some of those topics were revealed ahead of time. Some were added afterward. Forty-five minutes came and went so quickly, there was not time to cover all of them without sounding abrupt or, as Jack Paar said, “boring.” Those unbroached talking points might be grist for another interview if Carstanjen is willing.

This week’s conversation is posted in its entirety on my podcast. Most of it will be presented in written Q&A form on this website in two parts Saturday and Sunday. Listeners and readers will have the last word on whether it was thorough and fair. I suspect the opinion will not be unanimous. Actually, I hope it is not, the better for further discourse.

Carstanjen said the interview “wasn’t painful at all.”

I quite enjoyed the conversation. Agree with him or not, he is smart, well-spoken and downright charming.

My podcast co-host John Cherwa, a career journalist who covers racing for the L.A. Times, offered the ultimate compliment after he heard the interview.

As he put it, “It really didn’t seem that long.”

Ron Flatter’s column appears Friday mornings at Horse Racing Nation. Comments below and at RonFlatterRacingPod@gmail.com are welcomed, encouraged and may be used in the feedback segment of the Ron Flatter Racing Pod, which also is posted every Friday.