Imagine reading a Super Bowl wrap-up that detailed how every player on the field fared during the game. That's the type of synopsis - written in a jargon-studded, sometimes cryptic style - Kentucky Derby information junkies can find each year on that "How the Race Was Won" page of the Courier Journal's Sunday-after-Derby special section.
The race summary I'm talking about is the footnote element of the Kentucky Derby Chart - a mostly tabular rundown of race results - and is collaboratively composed by a team of "chart-callers" from Lexington's Equibase Co., the horse-racing industry's official data compiler and supplier. Using binoculars and then quick-order scans of video replays, the chart-callers not only note the position of each horse at six different points in the race, but they also record bumps, jockeys' actions, spikes in acceleration, signs of laboring and exhaustion and side-to-side maneuvers, among other observed details.
The callers themselves are in a race - against the clock. Hundreds of news outlets are waiting for their completed findings, and the Derby turnaround deadline is restricted to about one hour. This time crunch makes for somle unusually concise prose copy in the footnotes - copy that relies heavily on snippets of chart-caller phraseology handed down by predecessors from as far back as the days when a sttring served as a starting gate (and the callers had but one look at the race).
Former Newsday sports columnist Stan Issacs is so taken with the rhyhm and language of chart footnote writing that he thinks if of it as poetic - much the way Hart Seely, author of Pieces of Intellegence: The Existential Poetry of Donald H. Rumsfeld, views the press briefings of our nation's secretary of defense. While I do appreciate the rhyhmic meter in many of the footnote entries ("War Emblem came away in good order to gain the lead, /edged in to race in the three path,/went along under careful handling,/then drew off in the final furlong under energetic hand urgin/with the rider flashing his whip on the right side"), I'm much more intrigued by their oddly controlled vocabulary. I say this after reading all the chart footnotes from 1875 to the present in my Kentucky Derby Media Guide.
It's as if some long-ago superintendent of words provided chart-callers with a list of 75 preferred verbs, nouns and modifiers. Favorites among the steadily repeated action verbs: threatened, menaced, loomed, urged, succumbed, faltered, roused, collapsed, ducked, swerved and swung. Favorite adverbs: boldly, resolutely, menacingly, vigorously, forwardly, badly, seriously, sharply, grudgingly, abruptly, and erractically.
"Loomed" first appeared in the 1901 chart (along with thef irst and only use of "sulked"). Horses "finished boldly" and "loomed menacingly" long before one "loomed boldly" in 1958, but they've been looming boldly on a regular basis ever since. They've also "rallied willingly," "succumbed suddenly," "gave away grudingly," "faltered badly" and "broke alertly." When Alan-a-Dale showed "courage" in his 1902 victory, accomplished after the colt went lame in the stretch run, he set the table for many future Derby contenders to display "good courage."
Alternative expressions for whipping horses (from either the jockeys' or horses' perspective) have included "subjected to punishment," "under brisk urging," "soundly shaken up," "sharply roused," "under severe left-handed pressure" and event "under steady left-handed encouragement." I would guess that more than one Thoroughbred has gained courage through stinging encouragement.
Because every horse but one each year runs a "losing" race, the callers have had to work etra hard in coming up with lots of phrases for falling short. While several chasers "moved up boldly" or "closed with good courage," more often they "gave way suddenly," "could not sustain the bid," "lacked the needed response," "hung under pressure," or (beginning in 1958 and favored since) "had little left when the real test came."
I should note that before Arrirmed won the Derby in 1978 (when the Daily Racing Forum did the charting; Equibase took sole control in the late '90s) bottom-rung horses were routinely left out of the footnotes or were dealt with in dismissive fashion: "Warbucks was dull"' "Accipiter was through early"' "Bidson was without speed"; "Wine List could not keep up"; "Hallieboy showed nothing." In the 23 horse 1974 Derby the chart-callers used 179 words to describe the race. In the 16-horse 2003 Derby they used almost 800- 45 of them on last-lace finisher Brancusi.
Pretty good for a horse that succumbed suddenly to the whole pack at the top of the stretch.
