Race caller

A race caller is a public-address announcer or sportscaster who describes the progress of a race, either for on-track or radio and TV fans. They are most prominent in horse racing, auto racing and track-and-field events.

Among the jobs of a race caller is to identify the positions of various entrants during the race, and point out any sudden moves made by them. In horse racing, many callers also point out the posted fractions—the times at which the lead horse reached the quarter-mile, half-mile and similar points of a race.

A race-caller who specifically describes the event over a racetrack's public-address system is the track announcer. In horse racing, track announcers handle up to nine or ten races per day; more on special stakes-race days.

Most horse-race callers memorize the horses' and jockeys' (or drivers in harness racing) silks and the horses' colors before the race, to be able to quickly identify each entrant. During a racing day, track announcers also inform patrons of scratches, and jockey/driver and equipment changes (for example, whether a horse is wearing "quarter inch bends" or "mud caulks").

History

USA

The earliest known race calls occurred with megaphones long before the Public address system existed. In horse racing, the most well-known gentlemen was Jack Adler who started getting involved in racing as early as 1877 as a teenager. The Guttenberg Racetrack had an official announcer who broke down providing a segue to announcing for Jack in the early 1890s.[1] He was famous for the phrase "ALLLLLLL Right!!!"[2] In auto racing, Frederick William Burns gets the nod. In November 1900, he was the announcer at the very first New York Auto Show[3] but, Fred's racing days go all the way back to Bicycle racing in the late 19th century whereby he became well-known as the First Professional Megaphoner. Fred Burns was the first announcer of any kind in athletics dating back to 1884 and Staten Island Athletic Club games.[4] As an aside, Jack Adler and Fred Burns were friends, worked in boxing together and even announced baseball as a tandem for the New York Giants.[5]

An early race call happened at Agua Caliente Racetrack at Tijuana. On February 5, steward George Schilling called their first race. He started immediately to develop future race callers Clem McCarthy and Joe Hernandez.[6]

Among the earliest prominent race callers was Clem McCarthy. According to the book Sports on New York Radio, McCarthy was hired in 1927 as the first track announcer at Arlington Park in Arlington Heights, Illinois, one of the first Thoroughbred racetrack with a public-address system. He later gained national fame calling important horse races for the NBC Radio Network, including the Kentucky Derby, starting in 1929.

Other prominent race callers were early sportscasters Ted Husing, Bill Stern, and Marty Glickman, all of whom called horse racing and track-and-field events during their careers.

The best-known horse-race callers since the dawn of the television age have been Chic Anderson, Dave Johnson, Trevor Denman and Tom Durkin. All four gained acclaim not only as public-address announcers but network sportscasters, providing pre-race analyses and features for national fans as well as the race calls.

Other prominent horse-race callers with at least a decade of experience past & present day include Marshall Cassidy, Cawood Ledford, Fred Capposella, Luke Kruytbosch, Michael Wrona, Joe Hernandez, Larry Collmus, John Dooley, Frank Mirahmadi, Robert Geller, Phil Georgeff, Kurt Becker, Vic Stauffer, Mike Battaglia, John Scully, Dale Day, Dave Rodman, Paul Allen, Richard Grunder and Terry Wallace. Terry called over 20,000 races in a row at Oaklawn. Harness racing fixtures past & present are Ken Middleton, Larry Lederman, Roger Huston, Jack E. Lee, Sam McKee, Ken Warkentin and Shannon 'Sugar' Doyle.

In New England, at Suffolk Downs and Rockingham Park, a legendary announcer named Babe Rubenstein called races for decades, starting in the 1930s. Rubenstein, it was said, never miscalled a race. He was working at Rockingham Park on the day of the 1938 hurricane, when the winds are said to have blown off the broadcast booth from the top of the grandstand. An often told story in the 1950s had it that Babe was contacted by one networks, for possible employment on a national level, as opposed to his work in New England. The story went that as part of the proposed contract Babe would have to change his name. He refused, saying, "I was born Babe Rubenstein and I will die Babe Rubenstein." Jim Hannon was another prominent race caller in New England.

In track and field, one of the most prominent race callers is Tom Hammond of NBC Sports, who also anchors the network's horse-racing coverage.

AUSTRALIA

Arnold 'Ike' Treloar was the first person to call the races on radio when he broadcast the thoroughbred events at Port Adelaide, South Australia, in 1924 for radio station 5CL. As one of the pioneers of race calling in Australia, he broadcast for the next 21 years, mostly for the Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC). Within a year, race callers were describing events across Australia for their radio audiences. The earliest callers included Mick Ferry in Sydney, Bill Priestly in Melbourne, Keith Gollan in Western Australia and Mick Flanagan in Brisbane. Priestly became the first person to call the famed Melbourne Cup when he described the win by Windbag at Flemington Racecourse in 1925.[7]

In the early years in Australia, race callers were forced to broadcast from structures outside the racecourse, as the race clubs objected to them, fearing that patrons would listen to the radio rather than attend the track and patronise off-course bookmakers. Buildings and temporary stands overlooking the tracks, even trees, were utilised by the pioneer callers.[8]The issue came to a head in 1937 when the Victoria Park Racing Company, the organisation that conducted race meetings in Adelaide sought court orders to prevent Cyril Angles, one of the most popular callers of the pre-war era, broadcasting from an elevated platform outside the course. Eventually the High Court of Australia found in favour of the broadcasters, the Chief Justice, Sir John Latham, observing that "some people prefer hearing about the races as seen by Angles to seeing the races for themselves."[9]

As radio audiences surged in the pre-war years, more stations employed race callers. The leading callers of the era included Jim Anderson at 4BC Brisbane, who had started his career on the course public address system; Eric Welsh, the doyen of Australian race callers, who commenced with 3AR, Melbourne, in 1926 (which became the ABC in 1932) until joining 3DB in 1934, where he remained for the next 20 years; Lachie Melville in Sydney; and Fred Tupper in Sydney and Melbourne.

A new generation of race callers filled the airwaves after World War II. Three of the greatest broadcast from Melbourne, Joe Brown, Bert Bryant and Bill Collins. A fourth, Ken Howard, filled the airwaves from Sydney.

Starting as an assistant in Hobart in 1946, Joe Brown won the premier caller role for the ABC in Melbourne in 1947, following the retirement of Jim Carroll.[10] Brown called Rimfire's win in his first broadcast of the Melbourne Cup in 1948. For the next three decades, millions of Australians listened to his calls, both on the national broadcaster and on-course at the four Melbourne race courses - Flemington, Caulfield, Moonee Valley and Sandown Park - before he retired in 1981, having broadcast a record 34 Melbourne Cups.[11] His smooth, lucid style was typical of the Australian callers in the post-war period.[12] After attending the races in Melbourne during his coverage of the 1956 Olympic Games, the famous American sports writer, Red Smith, wrote about Joe Brown: "Flemington's incomparable race caller described every stride with vivid detachment . . . No matter how great the field, he calls every horse at every post, salting it with enlightened comment."[11]

After starting his career at country race tracks in New South Wales, Bert Bryant rose to prominence as one of Australia's most colourful callers at Radio 3UZ in Melbourne, where he was the number one caller for 30 years.[13] His witty descriptions are fabled: a front runner had "a wing on every foot"; a horse racing wide on the home turn "covered more ground than the early explorers"; and a runner tailed off would "need a lantern to find his way home", amongst them. Bryant called 28 Melbourne Cups and many other prominent races, including the famed match race between Rain Lover and Big Philou in the 1970 Queen Elizabeth Stakes. His call of Think Big's win in the 1974 Melbourne Cup was an example of the colourful style that attracted many listeners.

Known as 'the accurate one', Bill Collins started his race calling career when the regular course commentator failed to arrive at the Lindenow races in East Gippsland in 1943. He subsequently called for Radio 3TR Sale, before joining Radio 3DB Melbourne as an understudy to Eric Welsh. He became the chief caller in 1954, calling Rising Fast's win in his first Melbourne Cup description that year. Collins went on to call 34 Melbourne Cups in a long career. His famous calls included the WS Cox Plates when Kingston Town won for a third time in 1982, and the great duel between the New Zealand thoroughbreds, Bonecrusher and Our Waverley Star, in 1986. Collins was a talented commentator, regarded by many as the best in the nation when Australian callers were the best in the world, also calling both Harness Racing and the Olympic Games. He was a versatile media performer, appearing on television regularly, and winning a television Logie in 1959.

Ken Howard called his first race in New South Wales in 1936 before joining Radio 3XY Melbourne in 1939. When the Melbourne station discontinued race broadcasting, Howard returned to Sydney joining Radio 2UE in 1941 and 2GB in the early 1950s.Despite coming from Sydney, Howard called 32 Melbourne Cups during his annual coverage of the Flemington Spring Carnival. A recording of his 1941 Melbourne Cup, won by Skipton, portrays the voice familiar to radio listeners for decades. Howard's description of an odds-on favourite, as "London to a brick on" has become one of the best-known sayings in Australian racing.[11]

The other renowned Sydney race caller of the era was Geoff Mahoney, who worked as an understudy for Ken Howard before replacing Lachie Melville as the chief caller for the ABC. Mahoney was also a sought-after caller of boxing during his career. Many of the leading Sydney race callers were nurtured in their careers by Clif Cary, the prominent sports editor of the era.

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References
  1. "Wallace, 10 To 1". The Evening World: 2. November 19, 1892.
  2. "Jack Adler's Voice Is Heavenly Music". The Morning Post (Camden, NJ): 20. August 19, 1933.
  3. "Fun With Automobiles". New York Times: 9. November 9, 1900.
  4. "The First Professional Megaphoner". Spokane Chronicle: 4. August 8, 1898.
  5. "Baseball Notes". Brooklyn Daily Eagle: 5. May 28, 1894.
  6. The Agua Caliente Story, Remembering Mexico´s legendary racetrack
  7. Cairns, Steve (1994). London to a brick on - A salute to Australian Race Calling. Richmond, NSW: Australian Bloodhorse Review. pp. 17–20. ISBN 0646211765.
  8. Fiddian, Marc (1976). Through the Field Glasses - A History of the Pakenham Racing Club. Pakenham: Pakenham Racing Club. pp. 46–48. ISBN 0958998701.
  9. Latham CJ, Dixon and McTiernan JJ; Rich and Evatt JJ dissenting. (1937). "Victoria Park Racing and Recreation Grounds Co Ltd v Taylor". Commonwealth Law Reports. 58: 479.CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  10. Brown, Joe (1984). Just for the Record. Sydney: Australian Broadcasting Corporation. p. 29. ISBN 064252744X.
  11. Cairns, Steve (1994). London to a brick on - A salute to Australian Race Calling. Alexandria, NSW: The Australian Bloodstock Review. pp. 29–33. ISBN 0 646 21176 5.
  12. "ABC racing commentator Joe Brown calls the 1962 Melbourne Cup". ABC. 5 November 2013. Retrieved 18 March 2020.
  13. Bryant, Bert (1978). The Bert Bryant Story. Melbourne: Rigby. ISBN 978-0727009975.
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