Fresh from calling the Dubai World Cup, commentator Craig Evans reflects on an eventful six months
As glamorous as the latter part of the journey may sound, the Dubai calling contract is – of course – seasonal and the man best known as the voice of Singapore racing is back in Melbourne and contemplating just what the next six to 12 months might bring.
Such is the nature, in many ways, of his chosen and very specialised profession.
It’s a curious thing. For starters, very few people can do it. And we can’t live without them – a race without a call is a most unsatisfactory experience.
And those who can do it are often damned for one mistake. Not that too many of them make too many of them. There’s little praise for a job well done and a limited number of highly desirable jobs in the English speaking, race broadcasting world. No matter how good you are.
There’s fewer coveted gigs in the race calling world than spots in the Australian cricket team. The Sydney or Melbourne number one jobs, obviously. The other capital cities to a lesser extent – perhaps moreso if you happen to hail from one of said cities. Hong Kong, perhaps. Plus the odd gig in England or America but they’re probably not as hallowed as they once were.
And, at home, the incumbents tend to linger longer than any Test captain and interestingly the callers with the number one job, like our cricket captains, are expected to have a little gravitas. That was certainly the case, in days gone by, with the likes of Bill Collins, Bert Bryant, Geoff Mahoney, John Tapp and Ken Howard who were households names. And still is to some degree.
That list could go on as could one comprising more recent high profile racing broadcasters who’ve retired or turned to other pursuits or are winding down. Obvious names like “Aussie” Jim McGrath, David Raphael and Alan Thomas plus Terry Spargo who has returned home to Queensland and generally minor meetings after 17 years of ‘gates fly’ in the World Cup.
Mark Shean has returned to relative anonymity after demonstrating that he could read a race and call it as accurately as anyone. The jobs are limited.
There’s been, of course, recent changes of the guard in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane but Darren McAullay, Terry McAuliffe and Colin McNiff have been the respective incumbents in Western Australia, South Australia and Tasmania seemingly forever.
Evans, originally from Carnarvon in the West, concedes he’d be interested in the WA job if McAullay retired and indeed if it were offered to him.
But he doesn’t take the whole thing too seriously and insists he’s generally content to ‘potter around’. “Often it’s a case of being in the right place at the right time with any job you might really want. It’s hard to get in so the cricket analogy is probably right,” Evans said.
Evans, after ten years, left Singapore in November 2016 and returned briefly to Western Australia where his career had begun, in 1982, calling one race a meeting at Carnarvon.
“My first call was a three horse race with a head finish and I got it wrong. To put in perspective, it was Carnarvon and you called from the trainer’s room with owners and trainers cheering on their runners. It was past the winning post and only one level up,” he said.
Evans then drove to Melbourne, where he’s now settled but for the Dubai interlude, in February 2017 and picked up work for Radio RSN and Racing.com which took him around the state before securing the Dubai job some months later.
“I had earlier dropped a message to Frank Gabriel, the CEO at the Dubai Racing Club, but had forgotten about it. Then the approach came and I was delighted to take up the opportunity on a one year contract.
“Of course it’s only five or six months work through the Dubai season which is a complication. I’d hope to go back but it depends on what happens here and how it would impact the family. My wife Johanna’s got a very, good job in Melbourne and it wasn’t practical for the family to come over for the last season,” he said.
Evans’ son William is working with David Hayes at Flemington and hopes to be a trainer while his daughter Kate is at university in Canberra studying Law and Environment Science.
“Obviously the kids are well entrenched here so we will see what unfolds. Really, I am quite happy to potter around. While I still get a buzz out of calling a race, especially the better races, it’s always been a job to me. Fundamentally, it’s going to work wherever that might be,” Evans said.
It all began when his father Peter, one time bookmaker, bought his son a pair of binoculars. “I was 12 years old and remember coming home from school and dad had bought me the binoculars. I wasn’t then sure that he thought calling races was a particularly good idea but, many years later, a family friend told me that dad had secretly wanted to call,” Evans said.
Evans not only called his first World Cup this year but also ventured to the Dubai sponsored meeting at Chengdu in China. “All in all, it was a fascinating six months or so. The carnival meetings in Dubai were excellent and it was great to be part of World Cup night. Not to mention, going to China for the first time,” he said.
His international experience doesn’t stop there as he called two meetings at Santa Anita in February 2016. “That was ostensibly an audition for the permanent job there but I think they were just going the process with a decision having already been made,” he said.
As it turned out, another Australian Michael Wrona ‘won’ that job. Then, in another twist to the race calling world, Wrona was subject to death threats from a disgruntled fan who was enamoured with Wrona’s predecessor Trevor Denman.
Wrona was then, for some time, accompanied to work by security guards. Ah, who’d be a race caller? Craig Evans for one – despite the ups and downs.