It is important get them right, yet the target is impossibly small. Play-by-play announcers-of which race callers are foundational-are unwittingly thrust into providing an unrehearsed soundtrack to history, words and emotions that will be replayed endlessly. There is no template for describing the heretofore unseen. Remembering William Nack: A Passionate, Personable Master of His Craft “His gut reaction, and his call were just perfect, and perfectly delivered.”
“The horse ran beyond reasonable expectations that day, and Chic somehow caught up to that moment,” says Marshall Cassidy, who in the late 1970s would assist, and then succeed Anderson as the caller at New York’s Aqueduct, Belmont and Saratoga tracks. His entire call is remarkably in tune with the event unfolding in front of him, at first measured and then rising in cadence and urgency as Secretariat’s race became more astounding.
He is moving like a tremendous machine …”īut that is just the part of Anderson’s Tour de Force that is most widely remembered. You know the most famous of his phrases from that day: It was as if he and the horse were dance partners, Secretariat leading, Anderson following in perfect rhythm. Faced with a moment that was too large for words, Anderson found words just the same. Nearly a half-century later, Anderson’s call is as much a part of the memory as Secretariat’s race. It is the rare athletic feat that cannot become exaggerated over time, because it was impossibly large in its present, a giant chestnut colt thundering around the Belmont oval, never slowing, piercing a hole in the late spring air.Īlongside the big red horse, Anderson delivered a breathtaking race call, ad-libbing history on the fly, describing an ethereal performance that he could not have anticipated. It will come up this week, as Justify pursues a Triple Crown of his own, because it always comes up. It remains the most significant moment in modern racing history, an event that reached beyond the racetrack and sank roots in the broader cultural landscape, even in a time of Vietnam and Watergate.
Older fans weep in recollection younger ones eschew the customary disdain for things old and distant. The performance endures, both in the living memories of those who witnessed it, and in a second life on grainy video, receding through time but growing more mythic. It was on that day at Belmont Park that Secretariat won the Belmont-and racing’s first Triple Crown in 25 years-by 31 lengths in a time of two minutes and 24 seconds, more than two seconds faster than any horse had run the race.
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