60 Minutes - Sunday, August 13, 2017

Episode Date: August 14, 2017

Bill Whitaker explores how some businesses have fired American workers and replaced them with cheaper labor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Service fees, exclusions, and terms apply. Instacart. Grocer groceries that over-deliver. I think for once we're going to stand up as Americans and say enough is enough. We're not going to take it anymore. He lost his job to a foreign worker like thousands of other Americans every year, laid off because of a program that allows companies to replace employees with foreign labor. But before leaving, they often are asked to train their replacements. I can't wrap my mind around training somebody to take my position. You know, this is my livelihood. How am I supposed to feel?

I've heard some workers say that this is like digging your own grave. Is that what it feels like? It feels worse than that. Pain is my constant companion. Roger Stringer is in pain because his son, Zach, shot and killed his kid brother with his Remington 700 hunting rifle. But Zach said he never pulled the trigger. No, ma'am.

Years later, the family learned the rifle had a trigger defect. Has Remington ever admitted wrongdoing? Never. You cannot admit wrongdoing when you have seven million of these things on the market. We're riding with jockey Eric Perez. Come on, Tony. It's one of the many races in the fall and spring when timber jockeys roam the rolling hills of Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania in the run-up to the Maryland Hunt Cup. Give me some room! The sport originated in Ireland 250 years ago when horsemen raced through the countryside jumping hedges along the way.

You're approaching a five-foot fence. What's in your head? Well, number one, you hope you've been living, right? I'm Steve Croft. I'm Leslie Stahl. I'm Bill Whitaker. I'm Anderson Cooper. I'm Charlie Rose. I'm Scott Pelley.

Those stories tonight on 60 Minutes. Welcome to Play It, a new podcast network featuring radio and TV personalities talking business, sports, tech, entertainment, and more. Play it at play.it. Protecting American jobs was a signature theme of President Donald Trump's Make America Great Again campaign. A frequent target of candidate Trump was the H-1B visa program. The program, created more than 25 years ago, allows American companies to fill gaps in the workforce from overseas

with highly skilled employees who can't be found in the U.S. As we first reported in March, many businesses use the program as intended. But we discovered more and more are taking advantage of loopholes in the law to fire American workers and replace them with younger, cheaper, temporary foreign workers with H-1B visas. But before the American workers walk out the door, they often face the humiliating prospect of having to train the people taking their jobs. Last October, Robert Harrison, a senior telecom engineer at the University of California San Francisco Medical Center, was called to a meeting at the university with about 80 of his IT co-workers.

What did they say to you? We are sorry to inform you that as of February 28th, you'll no longer have a job. We're going to outsource your position to this company in India. To a company in India? Yes, sir. Harrison was told he could stay on the job, get paid for four more months, and get a bonus if he trained his replacement. Now I'm being told that I'm not only going to lose my job, but I also have to train these people to take my job.

Are you angry? Pissed. That exceeds angry. I'm really not a violent guy. I love people. But I've envisioned myself just backhanding the guy as he's sitting next to me, trying to learn what I know. And I was like, God, please don't let them send anybody to sit next to me to shout on me. I don't want to do this. I really don't. Harrison and his colleagues staged a protest outside the medical center.

His fellow worker, Senior Systems Administ administrator Kurt Ho, is losing his job too. He had just trained his replacement from India. I think for once we're going to stand up as American and say enough is enough. We're not going to take it anymore. Thank you for standing up for what you believe in. Their rally was organized by this woman, Florida attorney Sarah Blackwell. This is about the companies making the decision that you are worthless to them. She represents hundreds of U.S. workers who were fired and replaced by foreign workers with H-1B visas. When you tell someone their real reason for getting rid of these jobs is for cheap foreign labor, that should offend everyone. They have to train the worker who is going to take their job.

Right. They are told by their company, if you don't train this person in a way that we approve of them being trained, then you don't get your severance. The UCSF Medical Center is a highly regarded state-run institution. Administrators say outsourcing the IT jobs could save 30 million taxpayer dollars over the next five years. That's a fraction of the university's $5.8 billion annual budget. But to Robert Harrison, it's his job. I can't wrap my mind around training somebody to take my position. You know, this is my livelihood. How am I supposed to feel?

I've heard some workers say that this is like digging your own grave. Is that what it feels like? It feels worse than that. It feels like not only am I digging the grave, but I'm getting ready to stab myself in the gut and fall into the grave. When the H-1B visa was created in 1990, it was intended to help the U.S. attract and hold on to the best and brightest foreign graduates, like engineers and scientists, and provide a pathway to citizenship. At the time, members of Congress promised U.S. workers would be protected. This legislation protects American jobs. Former Congressman Bruce Morrison, then chairman of the Immigration Committee, authored the bill.

You came up with this legislation. What do you think of what it has become? I'm outraged the H-1B has been hijacked as the main highway to bring people from abroad and displace Americans. Businesses insist the visas are absolutely necessary to compete for the best global talent and that even more H-1B workers are needed to fill job shortages. Nearly every major high-tech company, including Apple, Google, Facebook, has employees here on H-1B visas. Media companies, too, including CBS. The argument you hear from the high-tech firms is that they can't find enough qualified American workers.

Well, there are a lot of qualified American workers, but the companies will do better financially if they hire the foreign worker rather than the American. The American workers are just as skilled as you are, perhaps even more skilled? I'm not. Side chain. Yes, that's true.

Rajesh works at a major Wall Street bank on an H-1B visa. To protect his job and personal safety, he asked that we change his appearance and name. He was placed at the bank by one of the growing number of outsourcing companies. Most of these global staffing firms are based in India. They've become multi-billion dollar enterprises supplying American companies with H-1B workers like Rajesh to replace American workers. Rajesh said he was never told in India he'd be taking Americans' jobs. I have to take all of their knowledge in. Basically, I have to steal it.

That's my job description. And the American worker is let go? Yeah. The American workers lose their job, and they also cry while leaving the job. They cry? They've been working there 20 years, and suddenly I've taken their job. If I lose a job, I can go back to India. But where can they go? You must know that when most native-born Americans see this going on, they blame you. Yes, but I'm not the enemy. The main villains are the Indian companies and their American corporate clients. They are exploiting us. Why can't we just say we're going to give jobs to Americans first?

Well, that's what the statute says. But they put in a loophole. And the loophole says if you pay over $60,000, you can do that. And beside that, you don't have to try to find Americans. Well, $60,000 is not high pay for this kind of work. People doing this work today easily make $120,000 to $140,000. Who put in that loophole? Well, it was done by Congress, but obviously the industry lobbied for it.

It's really a travesty that should never have been allowed to happen. It wasn't called training a replacement. It was called knowledge transfer. Craig D'Angelo worked for Northeast Utilities, now called Eversource, and was one of 220 IT workers replaced by H-1B visa employees. D'Angelo says his replacement, a worker from India, told him he was making half D'Angelo's salary with no benefits. I didn't get laid off for lack of work. I got laid off because somebody cheaper could do my job. To anyone who would say you're anti-immigrant.

No. That's a lie. That's a lie. You don't want to have any animosity towards them because they're looking for a better way of life. We met with this group of workers who all had to train replacements. Leo Pereiro had just received high performance reviews from Disney. When he was called into a personnel meeting, he expected a raise under promotion. And instead, I was given the news that in 90 days my job was over and I had to train my replacement. Never in my life did I imagine, until this happened at Disney, that I could be sitting at my desk and somebody would be flown in from another country, sit at my same desk and chair, and take over what I was doing.

It was the most humiliating and demoralizing thing I've ever gone through in my life. The issue was getting little notice until it caught the attention of the Trump campaign. Love you. Thank you. Mr. Trump himself had hired foreign fashion models on H-1B visas for his New York modeling agency. But when he saw how the theme of protecting American jobs resonated with his followers, he put Sarah Blackwell and fired workers like Leo Pereiro on center stage. And there's two reasons, there's two words of why this is happening. Corporate greed. Attacking the H-1B visa program fit perfectly with Mr. Trump's message

and tapped into America's simmering anger at the corporate and political status quo. Can you believe that? You get laid off and then they won't give you your severance pay unless you train the people that are replacing you. I mean, that's actually demeaning, maybe more than anything else. What are these H-1B visa workers bringing to the table? I think they're bringing a much different skill level. Mukesh Aghi is president of the U.S.-India Business Council. He has been an executive

at India-based outsourcing companies, and he was president of IBM India. About 70 percent of the 85,000 H-1B visas given out each year go to workers from India. He says the H-1B visa is just one part of a burgeoning U.S.-India trade relationship that benefits both countries. India has become a buyer of U.S. defense equipment. It's a two-way trade which is taking place, so we can't look at H-1B in isolation itself. You really believe that the Indian workers are better educated, better skilled, have skills the American workers do not have? No, no, I'm not saying that. With all the respect to the U.S. worker. So why are they getting the jobs and the Americans are losing them? Why are they not being done by American workers?

Well, I think you have to ask the companies who are taking those decisions. Because it's cheaper. That's one factor. Every company is out there to make money with the cheapest possible way itself. And that's what's happening. Well, I would say so. The workers being brought in don't know anything more than the workers they're replacing. They know less.

And that's why they have to be retrained or trained by the American workers who are being laid off. This is not about skills. This is about costs. But saving money on labor was not the law's intended purpose. Robert Harrison says the money saved can't replace the dedication of his IT team. So our jobs, they're not many old jobs. They're very important. Somebody's child is laying in the children's hospital fighting for their life and they depend on us. I see parents laying up all night long in the room with their child who's fighting for their life.

And you're going to bring somebody in here that has no clue, has no sympathy, don't know the urgency to make sure that everything those people need is supplied right now? It's not going to happen. We're Americans. Craig D'Angelo says at Northeast Utilities, the fired workers pressured to stay and train their replacements launched a quiet protest. Every one of us that would be let go

had an American flag sticking out of the cubicles, row after row after row. As we were let go, those flags were taken down. I was the last person let go. I went in and I took the last picture. There were no more flags left. You have a queasiness in your stomach when you look around and you're saying, this can't be possible. This didn't happen. But it did happen to Craig and Dawn and Leo and workers at hundreds of companies across the country. Former head of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano, now president of the University of California, faced a huge public outcry when she got rid of those 80 IT jobs at the medical center. She declined to give us an on-camera interview,

but stated publicly that the university, quote, didn't use the H-1B process in the right way. She instructed the Indian outsourcing company to stop using H-1B workers. But that comes too late for Kurt Ho and Robert Harrison. February 28th, they packed up, their final day at the medical center. It's going to be a matter of time before everybody else feels the same burden, the same pinch, the same hurt that we're feeling right here at UCSF. It's a matter of time. After our story, UCSF wrote us and said that it regrets the decision to ask some of its workers to train their replacements.

Quote, it was a mistake, and the university intends for this to never happen again. The Trump administration announced some H-1B visa reforms that tighten who can qualify for a visa and increase the scrutiny of companies who sponsor visa holders. Welcome to Play It, a new podcast network featuring radio and TV personalities talking business, sports, tech, entertainment, and more. Play it at play.it. The Remington 700 series is one of the most popular bolt-action rifles in American history, with over 7.5 million sold. But there's a problem. Thousands of owners have complained that the rifle has

fired without anyone squeezing the trigger. The company has downplayed the danger for decades, and the complaints represent only a fraction of the rifles out there. But as we first reported in February, one avid hunter and gun lover is on a mission to raise awareness about what he calls the rifle's defect. And he has good reason. I have become so accustomed to unpleasant thoughts and hardship, so that has become my new normal. One of Roger Stringer's sons is dead. The other went to prison. Pain is my constant companion. Family photos of better days show dad and sons hunting. Roger, a power line construction foreman from Enon, Mississippi, owned a Remington Model 700 rifle. Very popular gun. And he bought another one for his older, then 12-year-old son, Zach. We loved the one that I had, and he was old enough and mature enough.

And how much was the safety stressed? Paramount. But one night in 2011, the two boys, Zach and Justin, home alone, got into a fight. Zach, then 15, got his Remington 700. I loaded it. I loaded it with the purpose of scaring him. You knew you weren't supposed to load the camera. Yes, ma'am. I had been taught better. He says eventually emotions calmed down. And I started to stand up off of the couch. And when I bent at the waist and started up, I heard a click and it went off. And, uh,

I remember the fire leaping from the barrel. I remember seeing it hit. It was just half his head was gone. Panicking, he says, he went and got Justin's gun and placed it between his brother's legs to make it appear as though he had shot himself. Then Zach called his parents. And Zach met me outside and he said, Daddy, don't go in there. And I just pushed him aside and I came on in and it was really obvious that... It was right here, too. It was right there. Detectives suspected right away that this wasn't self-inflicted.

Zach was arrested the day of Justin's funeral and later confessed that it was his gun, but he insisted it went off by itself. Well, I didn't know how it went off. Did you deliberately kill your baby brother? No, ma'am. Did you pull the trigger? No, ma'am. Did you pull the trigger? No, ma'am. But Zach was convicted and sent off to prison for 10 years. Is it true that you actually testified against him? I did. I did. Because I'd never heard of a gun going off without a trigger being pulled. It made no sense. What Roger didn't know was that by then, Remington had gotten some 200 complaints claiming just that about rifles like Zach's, with a trigger mechanism called the X-Mark Pro.

Six months after Justin was killed, another tragedy with the same trigger, this time in Chadbourne, North Carolina. Sixteen-year-old Jasmine Thar and her cousin Jamisha were about to go Christmas shopping. They were standing out in the front yard with their grandmother sitting on the porch. Robert Chaffin, an attorney for Jasmine's family, made this animation. A neighbor across the street in his bedroom picked up a loaded Model 700. The safety was off. And it fired through a closed window.

And in what could be the most random act you ever heard of, the bullet traveled across the street and went through Jamesha's chest, barely missing her heart, and basically hit Jasmine almost directly in the heart. And she died in the grandmother's front yard there. That's an incredibly tragic case. In a deposition under oath, James Anthony Blackwell, a former Marine and experienced hunter, couldn't explain how his rifle went off. Do you, Anthony Blackwell, believe that you pulled the trigger? No, sir. Do you think you touched it in any way? No, sir.

So was he prosecuted? No. Chaffin had already won $17 million from Remington in 1994 for a client who shot himself in the foot when he said his 700 fired on its own. Back then, rifles were made with another trigger called the walker. The company has faced 150 lawsuits alleging injury or death related to that trigger, but argues it's always human error and never the gun's fault. Has Remington ever admitted wrongdoing?

Never. You cannot admit wrongdoing when you have 7 million of these things on the market. But according to a Remington internal document, the company had evidence of the problem as early as 1975, when its own test showed some of the Model 700s firing without the trigger being pulled. And this 1979 document indicates the company considered a recall. That never happened, but a decade ago, it did switch from the original Walker Trigger to the Exmark Pro. They admit under oath in recent testimony that the new model was brought about to the market because they had so many complaints with the older model, not that there was anything wrong with it. And it turns out the new model was actually worse than the old model for the first eight years they manufactured it. That's stunning. The Exmark Pro came out in 2006. Yes, ma'am. How soon after that did they, did Remington start getting complaints?

Soon. And they kept coming. Gun fired when safety was taken off twice. Trigger was not touched. Three police departments complained. By early 2010, Remington was getting videos from customers claiming they captured the trigger going off on its own after the safety was released. So you see the rifle did fire. Never touched the trigger. For years, despite the videos and testing hundreds of rifles sent to the company, Remington typically marked complaints, could not duplicate, and filed them in a database.

And regulators couldn't do anything because their hands are tied. The government is allowed to recall toy guns, but not real ones. Then, in February 2014, Remington received this video. A Remington owner videotaped an experiment in his garage, showing that the spontaneous firing is more likely in cold weather. As you can see, it fired. With the video all over YouTube, Remington did its own tests in bitter cold. Four out of ten rifles went off. In April 2014, the company fixed the problem and announced a recall of over a million three hundred thousand rifles. Yet, and here's where the critics weigh in, Remington continues to insist no one has been harmed by the Exmark Pro defect. It says that even after settling the case over Jasmine Thar's death. Jasmine's family sued Remington. Yes, they did. How much did they sue for?

They sued for over $100 million. I cannot tell you the terms of the settlement. And in that settlement, as all the others, Remington admits no wrongdoing. True. And gets the silence of everybody. True. It's a critical part of it. Chaffin says that even when Remington offers to fix the triggers, they do too little to notify the gun owners. The company declined our request for an on-camera interview, but in a statement told us they broadly promoted and advertised the recall. Yet the last number shared with us indicate only about one in four rifles were fixed. Nearly a million remained out there.

Do you think there are people with this gun, with this trigger mechanism, watching us right now saying, whoa, I have that gun? This will be the first time they ever heard of it. Do you think there are people with this gun, with this trigger mechanism, watching us right now saying, whoa, I have that gun? This will be the first time they ever heard of it. And there's still the issue of the original Walker trigger that remains in millions of rifles. Remington keeps getting complaints, nearly 2,000 in the past four years alone. It also faced a class action lawsuit in which owners of guns with the Walker claim the company knowingly sold them a defective product. Remington agreed to settle, offering to replace the triggers for free, even though it vehemently denies there is any

design defect in the Walker. A judge approved the settlement in March. But Todd Hilsey, an expert on class action notices, says the company is confusing its customers by burying the danger. No highlighting of stop using your gun. It might kill someone. What do they say? They say we deny there's a problem. We deny any wrongdoing. There's nothing wrong with this gun, but let's...

But we're willing to fix it. Amplifying his point, 10 attorneys general had written the judge chastising Remington for refusing to acknowledge responsibility for the harm caused by its defective triggers. If everyone turned their guns in, how much would this cost Remington to fix the problem? The value would be $487 million. Half a billion dollars? Half a billion dollars.

In Mississippi, Roger Stringer knew nothing about the class action lawsuit or the recall. He was visiting Zach in prison as often as he could, and Zach kept telling him that he never pulled the trigger. So one day in 2015, Roger picked up his iPhone. I googled Remington Model 700 spontaneous firing. And? I just about dropped the phone when all that stuff showed up. I mean, there was just mountains and mountains of information about those guns,

story after story of it happening to other people. He called Remington and found out that Zach's rifle with the Exmark Pro was under recall. That rifle is still being held at the local courthouse. A state forensic expert did test it before the trial, but Hal Kittrell, the prosecutor in the case, says he didn't know there had been other instances of the gun going off by itself. If you had known about this issue with this gun, the trigger problem, would you have gone ahead with the trial?

May have gone differently? I will say this, Leslie. Had we known that there was a problem with the trigger before we were getting ready for trial, I can assure you we would have looked into that. We would have assessed this case based on that evidence. There's no question about that. Shortly after we approached the prison to interview Zach, Roger unexpectedly got word that after five years behind bars,

his son would be released for good behavior. Roger now believes his son is innocent and has filed an appeal asking the Mississippi Supreme Court to reconsider Zach's conviction. But he wants gun lovers to know the story of his two boys, to hold Remington's feet to the fire. What I'm pushing for is for nobody else to have to walk in my shoes. I don't want anybody else to have to see their baby in the shape that Justin was in that night. What would you like to see Remington do now? Eliminate the danger that is lurking in so many households. Some people are going to say that it's convenient to blame Remington. In other words, what if you're wrong about Zach?

There are going to be naysayers. I accept that. I welcome another day in court. But let's do it with all the facts. I'm ready for it. Bring it on. The legal battle over the triggers continues. In May, a hunter from Oklahoma and a sheriff's deputy from Louisiana appealed the class action settlement, arguing it didn't do a good enough job notifying gun owners.

The case will be decided by the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals. Welcome to Play It, a new podcast network featuring radio and TV personalities talking business, sports, tech, entertainment, and more. Play it at play.it. Right around the time of the Kentucky Derby every spring, there's another big American horse race you may not know about, the Maryland Hunt Cup, the biggest, most demanding event there is in the world of timber racing. It's the American version of steeplechase, and the course is not for the faint-hearted. It stretches four miles over

the Maryland countryside, over three times the length of the Kentucky Derby track, and there is a major, sometimes dangerous challenge for both horse and rider, the timber. 22 wooden fences to jump, some of them five feet high. Our story on timber racing was first broadcast this past spring, and a lot of it was shot with a dozen or so small cameras, on the ground, in the air, and right in the saddle. We're riding with jockey Eric Perez on a horse named Touchdown Tony. Come on, Tony. It's one of the many races in the fall and spring when timber jockeys

roam the rolling hills of Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania in the run-up to the Maryland Hunt Cup. Give me some room! The sport originated in Ireland 250 years ago when horsemen raced through the countryside jumping hedges along the way. The timber fences used in this country are more intimidating. Some are on a slant, some over water. For horse and jockey, each jump is tricky. We're approaching a five-foot fence. What's in your hand? Well, number one, you hope you've been living, right? Patty?

James? Patty Nelson is a legendary jockey and trainer from a family that's been riding and racing since 1875. He won his first major race when he was 15 and won the Maryland Hunt Cup three times. Can you tell us what it's like to feel the exhilaration? There's just some magic about the power of that animal underneath of you. And then when you ask him for everything he's got the last quarter of a mile or something like that, and there it is. It is a marvelous feeling that only comes from doing it, really.

It is great. This is, to me, the most natural form of equestrian sport. All right, let's watch. Joe Davies trains both horses and riders at his Maryland farm. That was a lovely jump there. You know, they all did it fluidly, easily. Just look at him. So takeoff's important, and so is landing.

You can hear him hit the fence. Yeah, I mean, occasionally they'll tip that with their hind legs, but we put timber shins on, which are protective pads, so they don't really feel it. For jockeys, the perfect jump involves horse psychology and plain old horse sense. Being a good jockey is really learning how to read a horse and stay the heck out of their way. In the crucial seconds before a liftoff, says Davies, you can read a horse by stay the heck out of their way. In the crucial seconds before liftoff, says Davies, you can read a horse by watching the ears. A horse's ears will tell you what he's thinking about. And if you're doing this and kicking him and pulling on him, his ears will go back. He'll

be paying attention to you. If you can be as quiet and still as a mouse, then the horse doesn't think about you. His ears go forward. He's paying attention to what's in front of him. He sees the fence, and he jumps it perfectly every time. And there is something else, that indefinable chemistry, that produces in love, in art, in horse racing, something greater than the sum of the parts. You can take the fifth best horse and maybe the tenth best jockey, and together they can be magic. Or you could take the best horse and the best rider, and's no magic and there won't be anywhere near their potential.

Correct. Many of the rituals of the timber race are similar to what you see at Churchill Downs or Belmont or Pimlico. The crowd is well-heeled. The hats are outrageous. There's tailgating and there's grazing on both sides of the fence. Here's your betting. Here's your odds. But the betting is strictly small change, and so is the purse money. A mere $100,000 for the Hunt Cup versus $2 million for the Kentucky Derby. Now let's find out where they go. Success at timber racing requires a horse with both speed and stamina. Speed to

propel them over the fences and the finish line. Stamina to keep going for four miles. As a result, both horses and jockeys are often bigger, sturdier than the ones at flat tracks, as people here call traditional oval racetracks. And it's not unusual to see women competing in such a rough-and-tumble sport, sometimes finishing first. This is a sport in which men and women compete together. They do. Meaning women are pretty damn good. Yep. Very good.

I knew as soon as I started galloping racehorses, I'm like, that was the direction that I was going to go in. Patty Nelson's daughter Kathy and her sister Santa say it was more than just family tradition that hooked them on timber racing. It's the adrenaline rush. We would definitely be self-proclaimed adrenaline junkies, I would say. Santa won the Maryland Hunt Cup in 1993. Kathy won it as a trainer in 2002. Racing, they say, plays to women's strengths. How do you think women are better at it?

You know, if you're 130 pounds, you're not going to be able to bully a 1,200-pound animal. You're going to be able to coax them into doing something, but you're probably not going to be able to muscle them into it. You hungry, bud? I feed my horses every afternoon. I love it. How you doing, champ?

I love to hear them whinny to me, and, you know, it's a nurturing job, in a way, is to see them flourish. Hungry? Yeah. So it's something that just gets in your blood. But part of it is the danger. Part of it is the risk. The danger. Oh, yeah. Yeah. You know, I broke both my wrists, my knee, you know. It's something jockeys train themselves not to think about.

A misstep by the rider. A horse that loses altitude and trips on the timber. That was Haddix who lost his rider. Even worse, rear-ending or trapling someone who's fallen in front. Swayo lost his rider at the fence. Falling horses usually roll with it. Very few are badly hurt. The riders are something else. I still don't know whether I got kicked or the horse's head flew up and hit me in the cheek,

but I broke my jaw and knocked out eight teeth, which is a pretty good blow to the face. And if they gave a glutton for punishment cup, it would probably go to Mark Beecher, an Irish jockey who's a regular on the timber circuit here. Fractured my cheekbone. My two front teeth are gone. I've broken two collarbone twice. This one once.

Dislocated this shoulder twice, broken two ribs here, three ribs down my back, broken my ankle. You're right, you've got to be crazy to want to do this. It's the thrill, it's the buzz. But timber jockeys cannot live by thrill and buzz alone. Since there's not much money in the sport, most riders have to have a real job. From a very young age, I was always obsessed with horses. James Steerhoff is a man with a double life.

I have had some amazing opportunities and amazing experiences. During the week, he works at Brown Advisory, a financial firm in Baltimore, where he's immersed in the fine points of managing money, helping clients figure the risk and rewards of investing. And away they go! But weekends, it's the risk and reward of timber racing. And as a jockey, Steerhoff has quite a resume. So what's it like for you to win the Maryland Hunt Cup?

It was unreal. Twilde and James Steerhoff jumping now. It was both unreal and unlikely. Here he is in 2010 atop Twildoo, a horse he'd never raced before. Its trainer, Billy Meister, planned to ride Twildoo himself but was hurt in a fall and called Steerhoff to take up the reins. And I said, I mean, I'd love to, but I don't really know that this is a great idea. I'm at home with the flu, Billy says.

Not to worry. I rode the best race of my life with 104 fever. You'll be fine. But it says something that Billy wanted you on that horse. Yes. Twildew trying to come back again on the inside. Private attack leading towards the final fence. At the finish, it came down to Steerhoff on Twildew and Mark Beecher, the man of many fractures, on private attack. Steerhoff not only won the cup in 2010, he did it again two years later. I was able to achieve something that I never really maybe thought was possible,

and man, how lucky am I. And there is a certain horse that might be asking himself the same question. He is senior senator, once an also-ran, now a star. God, it's majestic, isn't it? I think he likes you. Before trainer Joe Davies bought him, he was a flat track racer with a mediocre record and a nasty reputation for acting up. Had to tranquilize him every day to get him out onto the racetrack. We knew he was difficult because he would throw his jockeys on the way to the start. He would throw his jockeys on the way to the start? Every time. It got so bad, the track veterinarians wouldn't go near him. The

trainer who had him before us said, I want you to know I've been training horses for 35 years. He's the craziest horse ever looked through a bridle. You're the craziest horse ever to look through a bridle. You know that? Davies and his wife Blythe, a legendary rider now trainer, specialize in horses that flamed out on the flat track, but show promise as timber racers, giving them a second chance. Is it different riding this horse? Yeah. How so? Because he's such a special jumper. The key was letting him run free. During his flat track career, he'd spent countless hours pinned up in his stall, miserable, angry. We turned him out in a big field and he became a happier horse really almost the first hour he was

here. The question was, would he jump? Some horses loved it, some don't. The answer wasn't long in coming. Senior Senator was a jumper even without a rider. We just figured out how to get him to do what really is natural and what this horse was just put on this earth to do, which is to run and jump. Senior Senator has led a good portion of this race. His biggest challenge came at the 2016 Maryland Hunt Cup against a strong feel of the bravest horses and riders. Racing around the turn with a big lead.

Senior Senator is the one to catch. But in the stretch, he lost the lead and gave it a last chance burst of energy. Battling through the stretch, it's guts for Garter. Senior Senator coming back again on the outside. Senior Senator! From crazy horse to champion. He didn't need discipline. He didn't need discipline.

He didn't need to be manhandled. He just needed to be understood. And I feel like that's what we were able to do. Now what is he saying there? Yes. I'm happy with all this attention. Is that right, Joe? Yes, that is.

He can still be temperamental, skittish at bad time, often a bit of a prima donna saddling up for a race. But he was a perfect gentleman accepting a sweet potato treat from a perfect stranger who happily survived with all ten fingers intact. There you go. In other words, senior senator who found his true calling with a little help from his friends is a lot like many talented humans. He hangs on the edge of sort of insanity and brilliance. Which is also a good description of what it takes to triumph in timber racing for man or beast. I'm Leslie Stahl. We'll be back next week with another edition of 60 Minutes. you you