Sunday promises to be a where-were-you-when kind of day. It won’t be because of the Grade III $150,000 Glens Falls on the turf. It won’t be because of the Grade I $350,000 Spinaway for juvenile fillies.
It will be because [insert your own superlative] Tom Durkin will make his final call in his long, loquacious career. The big man with the big voice is making his biggest call: calling it quits.
“I thought that 24 years here at NYRA was enough and that 25 might have been too many,” Durkin said. “It has been an honor and a privilege to have been given the best seat in the house to some of the greatest moments in modern racing history.”
And many of those greatest moments were great in part because of his delivery and narration. There’s a restrained tension in his voice at all times. That is until the final furlong when his skills as a wordsmith, a storyteller and conduit shine bright on his Saratoga loam. When the horses get serious, so too does Durkin.
Durkin was born in Chicago and by the age of 20 called races at country fairs in Wisconsin. For 10 years his voice boomed through the speakers of Cahokia Downs, Balmoral Race Course, Quad City Downs and Miles Park. This was his trip through the minor leagues until he landed the gig at Hialeah Race Course in 1981. Just three years after that he started calling the Breeders’ Cup, horse racing’s Super Bowl.
Talk to anyone and they’ll have their own favorite call, a singular moment when she heard him wrap up a race and immediately pulled up YouTube to hear more.
Maybe it started when Smarty Jones lost his grip in the Belmont Stakes.
“The whip is out on Smarty Jones. It’s been 26 years! It’s just one furlong away! Birdstone is an unsung threat! They’re coming down to the finish! Can Smarty Jones hold on? Here comes Birdstone! Birdstone surges past! Birdstone wins the Belmont Stakes!”
Take the 1987 Breeders’ Cup Classic (Durkin’s voice is barely recognizable here. It’s like he took a sip of helium.). Ferdinand and Alysheba, the 1986 and 1987 Kentucky Derby winners, met on the homestretch.
“Ferdinand has the lead. Alysheba, a final surge! The two Derby winners HIT the wire together! Ferdinand and Alysheba in a dramatic photo finish in the world’s richest horse race.”
It is and always has been his skill to pull out that fine detail at the end of the race. Knowing, in the heat and excitement of a blanket finish in the “world’s richest horse race,” to seamlessly drop in that both horses were Derby winners. Think of that for a moment.
Durkin has called eight failed attempts at the Triple Crown during the Belmont Stakes. That race and that moment comes pre-packaged with a charge and its own sense of energy. Then Durkin says something like this in 1998 as the horses come down to the wire.
“As they come to the final sixteenth, Kent Desormeaux imploring Real Quiet to hold on! Victory Gallop, a final surge! It’s going to be very close! Here’s the wire! ... [pause] ... It’s too close to call! Was it Real Quiet or was it Victory Gallop? A picture is worth a thousand words. This photo is worth five million dollars. Oh, no! History in the waiting, on hold, till we get that photo finish!”
Durkin knows how to bring the house down at Saratoga as well. His Travers calls are heavily seasoned with “too close to calls,” V.E. Day being the latest, but also Will Take Charge in 2013, Afleet Express in 2010 and Colonel John in 2008.
Yet none were greater than when the filly Rachel Alexandra went wire-to-wire to win the Woodward Stakes against older males.
“It’s going to be desperately close! Here’s the wire! Rachel won! She is indeed Rachel Alexandra the Great! ... Rachel Alexandra raises the rafters here at the Spa!”
Those are just a few favorites and they never fail to bring hairs to attention or tears to the eye.
In the lead up to California Chrome’s failed attempt at this year’s Triple Crown, Durkin told The New York Times, “Horse racing owes me absolutely nothing. I owe horse racing my life.”
And for those of us who have hung on his every word from the claiming ranks up to the most regal and prestigious Grade I, it is us who owe Durkin everything.
All these years and thousands of calls, his voice, well, it speaks for itself.
