9/17/2023 0 Comments Final stretch horse racing sim![]() He has taken medication, tried prayer and breathing exercises, and has read everything and anything about what, for him, has been a paralyzing dread - including how Sir Laurence Olivier developed stage fright in his fifties and often was shoved onto the stage. Last year in Louisville, in fact, Durkin was stretched out on a psychiatrist’s couch days before the race undergoing hypnosis in the hope of conquering his performance anxiety. Instead, the prospect of calling the race has, every year, prompted months of anguish as Durkin tried to muster the serenity to hold it together and conjure an accurate and evocative word picture for the chaos that is 20 horses thundering around an oval for a mile and a quarter. He is not packing his binoculars and notebook of more than 2,000 adjectives and phrases, the palette and paints of the track announcer’s craft, for his annual trip to Churchill Downs.īecause for the past decade, The Greatest Two Minutes in Sports, as the Derby is known, has been anything but for one of the signature voices of thoroughbred racing. Tom Durkin is no longer studying photos of Uncle Mo, Dialed In or any of the probable contenders to win next month’s Kentucky Derby.
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