LOUISVILLE, Ky. — By the time the horses arrive at the starting gate Saturday for the 151st Kentucky Derby, NBC announcer Larry Collmus will have already quizzed himself at least 10 times every day this week, matching the 20 names with the jockey silks that he’ll need to regurgitate without hesitation for an audience of millions.
He’ll have studied all the contenders’ previous races so that he can anticipate who’s going to the lead early and who’s likely to be running fast at the end. He’ll even have a few phrases handy that might lend themselves to a little poetry, like in 2015 when he had the presence of mind to say, “California Chrome shines bright in the Kentucky Derby!” just as he hit the wire.
Still, even as Collmus prepares to call his 15th straight Derby on national television — passing Dave Johnson’s record of 14 consecutive for ABC — the anxiety he will feel in those moments before the gate opens probably won’t be a whole lot different than his first Derby call.
“That pressure just kind of shows up every time, no matter how many times you do it,” Collmus told USA TODAY Sports.
For a variety of reasons, but mostly because there are no other American races with 20-horse fields, the Kentucky Derby is unquestionably the most challenging assignment for race callers, even for someone like Collmus, who has narrated thousands and thousands of races since he started in the 1980s.
Most of the time, he nails it. But the nature of the job is such that you can’t go back and erase mistakes or even a syllable that comes out the wrong way, which will inevitably happen when you’re spinning through roughly 375 words in 120 seconds.
And last year, Collmus was admittedly late to pick up Mystik Dan’s winning move up the rail as the horses came around the final turn because his eyes were trained on the horses coming up the center of the track, where the winning Derby move is usually made. By the time Collmus called Mystik Dan as the leader with about 1/16th of a mile to go, he had already been in front for about 10 seconds to the viewer at home.
“I think most people, when they want to do the job as best as they possibly can, they tend to be tough on themselves,” Collmus said. “So there’s some kicking yourself like, ‘Damn, I wish I got him a little bit sooner.’ But there’s no such thing as a perfect race call. It just doesn’t exist, especially in a race like that. But that said, you want to do a little better than that.”
When you think about the geometry of the racetrack, it’s incredibly impressive how announcers get the timing right as often as they do in the Derby. Collmus is perched up on top of the grandstand, somewhere near Churchill’s famous twin spires. As the horses exit the second turn, from his perspective watching through binoculars, it’s almost a head-on vantage point — which is completely different than the way the horses appear for the first mile of the race. It’s the place on the racetrack that makes Collmus the most nervous because it’s where, as an announcer, you actually see the least.
In a regular race with a smaller field, those few seconds don’t make a difference. But if the Derby turns into a stampede — which it did last year, with five horses pretty much even at the top of the stretch — having your eyes in exactly the right place requires a little bit of luck coming from that head-on view.
“I want to keep that in mind (this year) and avoid that, and it’s why I’m thinking about maybe a combination of using my binoculars, which I always do, and have a monitor there and maybe even put that to use to help with the perspective,” he said.
Conversely, Collmus was able to pick up the winning move by Orb in 2013 when it would have been easy to miss with two horses pulling away on the inside and mud splattered all over the white silks of jockey Joel Rosario coming down the middle of the track, rendering him almost unrecognizable.
“I was like 85 percent sure that it was him, and I just gave the big, ‘Orrrrrrrrrb’ call,” Collmus said. “Then as he got close, I’m like, ‘Thank God that’s him.’ The sloppy conditions made it a tougher job, but you’re more proud when you can overcome it.”
The other challenge for Collmus these days is that he does not call nearly as many races as he used to. Outside of a summer gig as Del Mar’s track announcer, most of his work is now on a studio set with FanDuel TV. So when Collmus jumps back into Derby week — knowing the huge audience and high stakes — he has to rely on experience and preparation rather than being in a day-to-day flow.
“I think it’s being more prepared than you normally would be, knowing there could be a touch of rust,” he said. “That’s why I’m really happy that we air a bunch of races on Friday and Saturday, just to get myself into the rhythm a little bit, and I’ll be calling all of them. So that’s going to help for sure.”
Despite everything that goes into calling the Derby and the anxiety of knowing how easily a call can go sideways with a 20-horse field, it still blows him away that he gets to do this, following in the footsteps of Tom Durkin and Johnson, both of whom he idolized when he got into the business.
It’s an assignment that Collmus has handled remarkably well — so well that NBC puts a camera on him to capture just how much emotion and energy he puts into calling a race his voice has become synonymous with for millions of fans.
“The amount of attention it gets, the amount of history involved, the fact that your call will be scrutinized and listened to many times, all of that goes into it,” he said. “And just the fact that when they come onto the track and start playing ‘My Old Kentucky Home’ and your heart rate starts going up, you’re like, ‘Oh God, here we go again.’ You’ve just got to be able to handle the moment. And that’s what it’s all about.”