Tom Durkin's call.
 

Tom always does a good job, but come on dude. Next time wear your glasses so you can call the horse shooting up the rail. I thought his biggest blunder mistake was calling the 04 Travers, the "belmont" stakes when Birdstone crossed the wire at Saratoga, but this call was terrible. Hey Tommy, get a clue..................

time to bring back Dave Johnson

this call had to be the worst in derby history, he never saw the horse , he sohuld have had a sign in his box - remember if see horse on rail , think borel

If it was Trevor, there would be calls for him to be put to death by now.

oh jesustapdancingchrist. could we not just have someone dig up the last 'race caller so and so sucked' post and put the next bad call in that thread?

The race hadn't even finished yet and I said aloud "Durkin's asleep again".

or knee deep in mint julep glasses. those things are good!

Time to let Mark Johnson call the race to all....Great call on his part.

I agree that was annoying. I see this horse charging down the stretch and I'm like ahhh! who the **** is that!?

However, has anyone else noticed that for the past year or two Durkin's voice always is annoyingly wavery during his calls? Drives me freakin batty. "And he-e-ere's M-a-a-acho Again on the outside."

That's the call we got at Arlington, and though it was difficult for me to hear him with a group of drunken frat boys next to me screaming, "WHERE THE HELL IS CHOCOLATE CANDY?!?!?!" over and over, I thought it sounded like a pretty good call from him.

Kentucky Downs was actually alot worse for annoying patrons on Oaks Day. I think it was Grandma's day out and since the Bingo hall across the street burned they ended up at KD.

There were 2.5 dollars of Trifecta tickets at KD cashed in the derby.. A mom and Daughter had a buck each, because they liked the name.:wf :wf

Calling at Churchill is not easy... they run straight at you, literally. Its the horses shoulders and the jockey's sleeves for much of the stretch.

The crazy part about this Derby... there were three horses with the same silks (Winstar) and two others with the same silk (Bernie/Atomic).

It's a Borel thing. Denman missed him even worse in the BC Juvenile...

and another two with the same silks and different caps (Godolphin.) And mud covering everything, and on top of it, the most impossible horse in the race with the least distinguishiable silks.

hey, he's a small horse . hard to see . give tom a break .

Yeah, very good call I thought. His only mistake was that went back to the English (and correct :p ) way of pronouncing Derby near the end of the race, but that's forgivable.

All three Winstar horses had white caps. I'd have gone ballistic with the colors man!!

To be fair, there's no way in hell any of you figured Mine That Bird would be exploding away from the pack. Durkin was probably too shocked to spit it out.

Yeah - imagine the embarassment of calling that horse en route to a runaway win when it turns out it was some remotely logical horse that wasn't out of contact with the rest of the field early on.

The candance of his call wasn't Durkin-esque smooth when that huge inside move was made to the lead ... I think he saw it - but either couldn't believe what he was seeing enough to say MTB's name or perhaps he simply didn't know which horse it was making the move.

covered in mud as they were, he probably had to refer to his notes-by then, the move was made.

I'm not gonna give him a hard time for this call. Who the fu*k expected Mine That Bird to come storming up the rail? It was equal to the day Denman missed Street Sense in the BC Juvy. I was only miffed at Trev that day because I bet SS with two hands and I have trouble picking the saddle towel numbers when they are all purple.

Tom was probably utterly stunned, as was I, sitting on my couch. I didn't have words either.

LOL I had to laugh, another thread about lousy announcers.

I had to listen to the race on the radio. I had no idea what the hell was going on. The first time Durkin mentioned MTB, the field was entering the far turn - the next time was when he was 4 lengths in front nearing the wire. Please retire Durkin!

Like Tom Landry, Durkin, The Game Has Passed You By. The Call Was Like The Call Of A Buffoon! I Couldnt Even Get The Race Here In Berlin Until 15 Min After.

Why does Zayat insist on putting the "Z" on the front of the jockey's cap? It isn't like you can't already pick out his silks 1,500 feet away without binoculars. Pilots landing at Bluegrass airport have been known to remark, "Hey, I see that Zayat has a horse running."

In the 1986 Kentucky Derby call, Ferdinand is not mentioned the entire race until he and Shoemaker make the lead just before the finish.

Trust me on this. It's one of my fave Kentucky Derby tapes and I've watched it scores of times.

All of ABC's 90 minutes.

:-)

Here is the race. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wuMp9AjKqf0

I'm convinced that catching that late move on the rail is one of the toughest things for an announcer - and almost every announcer is going to hesitate before calling the name of a rank outsider to take the lead inside the furlong marker of the Kentucky Derby - you literally want to make sure you are correct. Tough.

My miff on this year's telecast is more with NBC on the cameras.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think they had a single shot in the telecast that showed the vast difference between Mine That Bird and the rest of the field in the early going.

I understand no isolated camera, but there should have always been a broad shot available to catch the entire field.

Thanks.

Now it's "scores," plus one!

Only the Godolphin pair had different hats for the same silks. Crazy the WinStar tri-entry didn't.

I wish I could watch my racing tapes from the 1980s, but the tapes are in the Beta format and my Betamax broke when I finally sat down to begin the task of putting them all on DVDs.

Fortunately my first recording device was VHS, circa 1985.

Until recently I thought I had the entire 90 minute telecast of every Kentucky Derby since 1986.

Ironically, the other night I went searching for the 1996 Grindstone derby after catching a recent feature video of him.....I think on bloodhorse.com

Turns out, I don't have the 1996. But thinking about it, I was between wives in that period.

I must have been busy with other things....

:)

How is it correct to pronounce Derby like "Darby"? If we're messing around with things like swapping vowel sounds, I'll just start pronouncing IEAH as "thrrp."

Do you pronounce everything exactly how it's spelt?

I just think it's correct because that's how the race it's named after is pronounced. Anyway, it was just a random comment and a spectacularly unsuccessful attempt at humour, at about the quality level you can expect from me when I'm bored at work.

The same way it is correct to pronounce Paris (pah-ree)

I'm as American as anyone, but we do say it wrong.

I like hearing guys at the OTB in Kentucky pronouncing that Juddmonte horse Champs Elysees as if they never had a history class.

Or Versailles as "Ver-sales," as they do in Kentucky?

The race was named after the "Derby Stakes" in England and THAT race is pronounced dArby after Lord Derby, pronounced Darby. Ask Lord Derby about the pronunciation. It's been going on for centuries.
Every other racing nation that runs races called "Derbies" uses the British pronunciation.

I get a kick out of "Champs El-EE-es" as if the horse were from Ver-Sales KY!

I love Durkin, but his call was reminiscent of Denman's call or miscall of Street Sense in the BC Juvenile. In all fairness, Mark Johnson did not catch the big move early either. He did call the winner sooner than Durkin did, but it wasn't like he saw him in early stretch. Johnson made the call just as MTB was taking the lead. I think announcers just get used to horses rallying on the outside and sometimes just don't see the ones that sneak up on the rail. All in all, I thought Mark Johnson's call was clearly superior to Durkin's.

This is so true. When race calling with the same silks, at least in my opinion, you can verify the horse by other markings, jockey style or in the worst case, by its saddle cloth. In the Derby, however, with three horses of the same silk and virtually no chance of seeing a saddle cloth... yikes. You're in the "look through the rest of the field for the other two first" territory. Brutal.

i love tom durkin, but it's time he retired, he just dosen't have it anymore.