Vic Staufer

Originally Posted by oracle80

Joel putting Trevor ahead of Durkin is just plain foolish. Perhaps you don't realize this but Trevor fails to do a "little" thing thats called giving fractions. Now that may not seem like such a big deal, but every time Durkin has to interrupt his call to give a fraction it interrupts teh flow of his call and also causes him to have to start with a new cadence upon resuming the fractional call. Now look, if Durkin didn't have to interrupt his superlatives and adjectives with the fractional call(like every great race caller in history has done) I'm sure his calls could be every bit as "technical" as Trevors. fact is Trevor has always punked out and not called fractions so he can showboat with adjectives. hes about 1/10th the race caller that Durkin is.

I couldn't agree less, but that is your opinion and you're entitled to it..

..When I say technical, I am referring to everything except the glamorous voice and vivid adjectives or anything else that is cosmetic about the race call. A good technical race caller paints the best picture of how the race is unfolding...it takes great forecasting and handicapping ability and Denman is leaps and bounds better at it than Durkin....I've seen several races in New York where a jockey dropped his stick, or there was significant bumping, or a horse was closing from the clouds and Durkin never saw him....

..great example was this year's Wood Memorial..Durkin was so caught up on Keyed Entry and Bob and John walking home in that race that he didn't even mention ONE WORD about Jazil closing until after the wire he yelled "Jazil"...horrible...How can you miss a horse that closes from 20 lengths out of it?..I was hoping he would win to see how Durkin was going to wiggle out of it..LOL.

Denman understands the horses a lot more than Durkin and it shows in his race calls.....Howvere, I do prefer the class and power in Durkin's stretch calls.

As for the fractions, Denman will say them when he feels that they are relavent....Durkin thinks every first quarter is "blistering"..it's hilarious.

As a horse player, I guess I don't value a race caller telling me the fractions unless they matter...i.e. too fast or too slow...I have trained myself to get the fractions off the monitor because they are available to read a few seconds before Durkin says anything - thus he is being redundant half of the time he is saying the fractions anyway....I would rather an announcer be accurate with his call and be able to see things that are about to happen and communicate them fast - instead of reacting late like guys like Tom Durkin and Terry Wallace do most of the time....just my opinion...