And he could be dramatic without being loud.”Īs part of his TV gig, Anderson began announcing races at the track now called Ellis Park, in Henderson, Kentucky, 10 miles over the border from Evansville. He did not have the classic announcer’s baritone, but, says Durkin, “He had this pure, lyrical voice, very easy to listen to. He was a relatively tall man, over six feet, with sandy hair and an anchorman’s smile, perfect for the gig. In the late 1950’s, Anderson got a job as sports director at an Evansville television station. Navy and eventually received his degree from Indiana University. According to obituaries published at the time of his death in 1979, he attended Wabash College for two years, then spent two years in the U.S. He had been on the racetrack for most of his adult life. His appreciation did not get the life it deserved: Less than six years after calling Big Red’s Belmont, Anderson was dead of a heart attack at age 47. “He reveled in the fact that his call of that race was replayed and appreciated so much,” says Tom Hammond, the longtime NBC announcer who was one of Anderson’s closest friends. His call was poetry of sorts, a man both denying and processing the performance he was witnessing, expressing his wonder-and ours-while never losing sight of his fundamental assignment to inform. On the second Saturday in June of 1973, Chic Anderson was as nearly perfect as a man with a microphone could be. It is important get them right, yet the target is impossibly small. Play-by-play announcers-of which race callers are foundational-are unwittingly thrust into providing an unrehearsed soundtrack to history, words and emotions that will be replayed endlessly. There is no template for describing the heretofore unseen. Secretariat was remarkable that day, and Chic was up to the task.” Tom Durkin, who called Triple Crown, Breeders’ Cup and other races for NBC for more than two decades, says, “Secretariat’s performance, Chic Anderson’s performance … Those are the two greatest, ever, in their fields. You know the most famous of his phrases from that day: It was as if he and the horse were dance partners, Secretariat leading, Anderson following in perfect rhythm. Faced with a moment that was too large for words, Anderson found words just the same.
Nearly a half-century later, Anderson’s call is as much a part of the memory as Secretariat’s race. It is the rare athletic feat that cannot become exaggerated over time, because it was impossibly large in its present, a giant chestnut colt thundering around the Belmont oval, never slowing, piercing a hole in the late spring air.Īlongside the big red horse, Anderson delivered a breathtaking race call, ad-libbing history on the fly, describing an ethereal performance that he could not have anticipated. It will come up this week, as Justify pursues a Triple Crown of his own, because it always comes up. It remains the most significant moment in modern racing history, an event that reached beyond the racetrack and sank roots in the broader cultural landscape, even in a time of Vietnam and Watergate. Older fans weep in recollection younger ones eschew the customary disdain for things old and distant. The performance endures, both in the living memories of those who witnessed it, and in a second life on grainy video, receding through time but growing more mythic. It was on that day at Belmont Park that Secretariat won the Belmont-and racing’s first Triple Crown in 25 years-by 31 lengths in a time of two minutes and 24 seconds, more than two seconds faster than any horse had run the race. Yet he couldn’t have known in that instant-because who does?-that words he spoke in the ensuing two-and-a-half minutes would outlive him by decades and help frame one of the seminal moments in sports history. He had been calling races since the late 1950s in 1961 he became the regular caller at Churchill Downs and eight years later was hired by CBS to call the Triple Crown races on its telecasts. He was 41 years old, married with five children, living an itinerant life that took him away from the family home in Evansville, Ind., for weeks at a time, but one which he clearly loved.
At a few minutes past 5:30 on the afternoon of June 9, 1973, Charles (Chic) Anderson raised binoculars to his eyes and prepared to call the 105th running of the Belmont Stakes.
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