Trevor Denman - Gio Ponti
 

I know there are a few race announcers that lurk on this board, so I wanted to give a shout out to Trevor Denman for having the ballocks for calling Gio Ponti a nose winner over Ventura at the wire in a high profile race no less and saying so rather nonchalantly. I don't know how he knew seeing the photo afterward but well done.

now if he would only have the ballocks to call out fractions.

I thought it was ballsy....I had no clue. Looked like Gio Ponti got up, but never would have called it without seeing a slowed replay.

When first watching it I thought Ventura had held on, I've watched many races from SA and I was surprised he called Gio Ponti when they crossed the wire. Usually racecaller's will say 'too close to call' or 'photo' given it was on Big Cap day and it was the Kilroy, I thought he showed alot of balls. When they replay that Kilroy years from now, it was nailed. I can only imagine if he was wrong, you can't go back and recall the race. He took a big risk.

I hear ya. Even John Dooley, who is my favorite track announcer, will call it a photo lots of times when it's completely clear who won...so basically the exact opposite of what Denman did. That's about the only thing I don't like about him, is that he anticipates there being a photo 40 yards out, and then a horse wins by a half-length.

One thing you have to remember about calling photos is placement of the announcers booth. I know in my 3 years at river, i probably called photo without calling a winner or atleast saying who i thought got it maybe 3 times ever. Cause my booth was right on the wire.

At Portland, i'm atleast 50 to 60 feet up the stretch from the wire. I've heard Tampa is damn near 100 feet up from the wire and at keeneland, Kurt Becker is halfway between the two finishes.

That being said, i thought watching the race Gio Ponti got it but was surprised to hear Trevor call it that close, and after watching the first replay i thought Gio Ponti might not have got it LOL Kudos to a legend!

Gee isn't he impressive. So he gets lucky and we need to kiss his ass.

How about all the times where he takes STABS at the pace and ****s up? A fairly common occurrence for him.

You know, when he sees a bunch of horses contesting and ASSUMES that the pace is fast, and then looks like an idiot when the split is posted. Of when he assumes the pace is picking up when horses start accelerating; etc.

The day can't come quick enough when ALL tracks will have TRAKUS (or something similar) and we can mute out all the NOISE (of the race caller). Which is exactly what I do at DMR: MUTE THE DOOFUS.

I'm 40 feet before the wire or so, often a tough angle, but you get used to it. I never go out on a limb though and say whether or not it was Jess Toast to Cash, AKG Longsideshot, Dashing Bye In First or Rocking Rocky Dash during the Q's.

Contrarian of the board?..Obcourse lets just continue with the status quo have no one ever go out on the limb and call head, neck finishes as photo finishes. :rolleyes:

It would be o.k. for you to go out on the limb calling T' breds (so what if Dave Johnson makes a lil blunder before he calls it a career.)

Jballscalls, Travis

That's fair, it depends on the vantage point where you are calling from and I can understand that. I just don't remembering a high profile racecaller calling a horse in as close a finish as in this Kilroy and being so sure of themselves. This wasn't a 10K claimer on a lazy Thurs afternoon, it's certainly not the norm.

Son of Sam=Famous 70's Contrarian

"I feel like an outsider. I am on a different wavelength than everybody else.."-S.O.S.

Any response from Fatman I take as a compliment anyway, the more contrarian the more the compliment. :tro:

Big deal. The guy has a good eye for photos. Last time I checked, we have replays, so it doesn't really matter. It doesn't cancel out all of his other annoying traits.

I told you that using this is like saying "I'm Joey the O.C.D. guy."

I don't understand this. He's annoying. He's not enraging, he's annoying. Why can't I say this again?

Yeah

At one time, a very distant time, I thought this board was more for BETTORS than casual 'fans'. As a better I want MORE PRECISE DATA, which includes video. PERIOD!! **** all the superfluous ****. The race caller has no role in this. I don't need 50%, 75%, or whatever, accuracy. I NEED 100% ACCURACY!! So give me TRAKUS and mute the monkey (to balance out the cost).

Now, I find it IRONIC that in an age of TECHNOLOGICAL EXPLOSION, where MORE is the norm, that SA, (one of Denman's employers) is NOT SHOWING FULL HEADON REPLAYS. And they haven't for a while. (Of course, they even further truncate these replays in the case of spills -- wouldn't want to be politically INcorrect now, would we?) They must figure we're all FANS and are SO IMPRESSED by their monkey getting a photo correct that we could care less about the more precise aspects of the game.

This is yet another example of why the ****in game is lagging WAY BEHIND THE TIMES.

You can do anything you want. I am not saying to stop doing it.

I loved your recent troubled trip post, btw. Seems like you've got that 'trap' locked in.

AB+(abx3)-Ad=R2
CX(asd/AX)-the sum of pie.
T. Baze = Trap

Eyes for horse shooting up the rail > good eyes for photo's

If you want to see/hear an announcer make good calls on the wire,tune in to Ed Burgart at Los Alamitos.He is almost better than shuttercam.

I've made my fair share of "on the limb" photo calls... last year's Super Derby Prelude was one I sweated-out for a good two minutes before they posted the winner. I've also bailed on a few, but oh well.

Calling photos is not a macho thing with announcers by any stretch. Not once I have I received, made or heard of a call saying, "Holy ****, did you see that photo I just called?"

I think calling the photo is over-rated from the little to the big races. It's what goes on between the start and the finish which sets-up the photo that, in my opinion, is more important from the announcers perspective. If the listener has no idea who is in the photo, than what good is the photo to begin with? That sort of mentality...

Let's see if this works, but I just took this photo from the booth here at LAD. Notice the massive pool sizes as wagering just opened for our fifth race.



My booth is another 10-15 feet before where those green bushes start inside the rail, so it really makes the outside horse look like he's farther ahead of the inside horse everytime. I think in today's fourth race I was a bit off with this... the outside horse looked like he was home first, but in reality, the inside horse held on.

Well then you made a very stupid call.

God bless it.
Will somebody please slap this guy
upside the head with a frying pan.

When you read the first post and...
Ahhh forget it. YOu dont.

It's why Trevor is the best in the business today. Along with Marshall Cassidy, they are my two favorites ever.

Sure, anyone with any street sense knows Trevor is the best around.

NT

lol I laughed at this

Travis, seeing your photo of LA Downs fine dirt/turf courses reminded me of a curiousity you may or may not know the answer to. Will EVDs turf course, which has been under construction for years, be operational for this upcoming season?

Trevor is the best LOW TAKING MUMBER as the horses load.

And

Imbriale is the best at waiting at least 5 seconds AFTER they break to announce that they have.

Our cup runneth over.

Supposed to be, yes...

i didn't notice that Trevor called the photo, but its not something I care about really, the announcers opinion of the photo.

I'll take any of the announcers on this board before TD anyday. John Imbriale is a god compared to him. I don't get all the fawning over him. The amount of inaccuracies that he comes up with is staggering.

Rocking Rocky Dash overcame some traffic trouble to win today at 12-1!!

:tro: very clever.

amen. who cares? even if he calls it wrong, does it make any difference at all? i never understood the tv announcers who are "afraid" to call it. it's like they're worried they might make someone tear up their ticket.

Oh yeah. I forgot that one. I forgot that nobody is allowed to make a mistake. You have to call over 1000 races a year and you better not make a mistake. I would love to hear all of those that criticize him try to do it once. Then if they get through that one race, let's see how they handle a full card. Not one of those cards with four and five horse fields but full ones. With jockeys wearing the silks of owners that they aren't all that familiar with. It's not as easy as people seem to think it is. I think that's part of why you never see the announcers that are on here criticizing any others. Because they know how hard it is. I bet most of you that criticize them couldn't do it even if you were watching a replay and knew the results already.

dorkin makes far more and bigger mistakes.

I agree with most of this -- though on the other hand, it may need to be cleared up because some people are taking great liberty in their logical leaps.

For myself, I agreed that I was impressed with the fact that he called Gio Ponti. I don't think it makes him a great announcer, and he's probably not even in my top 5 favorites, it was just one thing that stood out to me on that broadcast, the same way it did to CSC. Generally, race callers are reluctant to make a call on anything they could potentially be wrong about -- ie anything less than an obvious head, so that's what made this really stick out was that it was so close and it just hit me as something you didn't hear every day. I also found it interesting that he was so sure of it, when the photo showed it was awfully close.

Doesn't make him the best. Doesn't make him less obnoxious for some of the things he does. Doesn't undo his botched Street Sense call in his second career Breeders' Cup race call. It's not supposed to. It was just a very unexpected, very confident, out of the norm declaration compared to what we're used to hearing during finishes that close.

No more than that.