South African horse-racing commentator, Craig Peters, made his commentary debut as a 17-year-old way back in the mid-1970s. The venue was Gosforth Park, in Germiston, a race-track that no longer exists, and Peters was petrified of stuttering or making a mistake or calling one horse by the name of another.
Practice up until then consisted of sitting by himself, watching a race and commentating into a tape recorder. He would be dispatched into the stands – at Vaal or Turffontein or even Newmarket, a track south of Jo’burg – and told to commentate on what he saw while recording every word, every hesitation and every pause.
Afterwards those older, more experienced and wiser than he, would listen to his recording. They would make suggestions leavened, if they were intelligent about such things, with praise.
The apprenticeship lasted, according to Peters, who is Lebanese, for between three to six months. Finally, he was squeezed into the stalls and found himself under starter’s orders, let loose on the track and told to have a run.
By this stage of his life Peters was no longer at school, having attended Mayfair High and Western High in Western Jo’burg before leaving early. As a boy he sometimes used to accompany his dad, Stanley, to the races, sitting on the bonnet of his father’s Valiant or Vauxhall trying to identify the different horses.
Horse-racing and horse-racing commentary was what made the youngster get up out of bed in the morning. The noble joy horse-racing gives has hardly diminished for Peters in 50 years.
“I was lucky,” he says, looking back on his debut race. “Big Swinger won the race I was commentating on at Gosforth Park by eight lengths. It wasn’t a difficult beginning. It was a soft landing and I was away. I was also the first caller to ever commentate on a race from the racetrack in Bloemfontein.”
In a couple of days’ time, Peters will commentate on his 38th Durban July, having become if not the voice of horse-racing in South Africa, certainly one of the most instantly recognizable horse-racing voices in the land. He will make sure to go to bed early on the Friday night before the Saturday race because, he says, carousing and late nights are poor for one’s eyesight and concentration.
He, sometimes with his son, Sheldon, sometimes without, will get to Greyville about two hours before racing starts. He will find his way to his commentary booth and feel his way into the busy day ahead, with him and Sheldon between then commentating all 12 races on the card, either for SuperSport, or over the Greyville public address system.
Of the two mediums, commentating over the public address system is the more harrowing. This is because you are aware of the crowd, who exist behind things as a kind of visceral, rolling surge. The crowd’s voice rolls. It creates an echo. It roars as it rises before it falls.
You have to be sensitive to the echo, and modulate your voice accordingly, remembering, at all times, that you are required to be crisp, clear and, above all accurate.
Accuracy dictates that you know all the owners’ colours. In the flying surge to the line, with the jockey’s silks billowing, no commentator is able to tell horses apart, but he will be able to distinguish the owners’ colours one from another.
This can be tricky, because some owners might have more than one horse in a race. If this is a case, jockey’s helmets become differentiating with, say, one wearing blue, another yellow, and third red. All this must be learned beforehand but the peace and quiet of a commentator’s booth is as fine a place as any in which to do some last-minute brushing up. Just like a jockey on a frisky three or four-year-old, a confident start is paramount. Hesitation plunges you into the bowels of the damned.
A key element of the commentary booth is the red light outside the back door, the equivalent of a “do not disturb” sign. Peters turns on the red light – or, in his words, “sees that the button is working” – when he enters the booth. He might have a yak or pass the time of day (the media box at Greyville is close by) during the afternoon itself but mainly he wants to be left alone to compose himself and ease into the most important race of the annual horse-racing calendar.
He is not superstitious, he says, so doesn’t need to his lucky shirt or pair of shoes for July day. He used to introduce the jockeys in the parade ring beforehand, he says, and did that on nine or ten occasions, but the day became a little busy with those duties before the race itself.
Now he waits calmly in the booth beforehand as he waits for the magic minutes in which the horses are eased – sometimes forced – into the stalls.
Peters’ first July was the 1984 race. The previous year’s race was commentated on by Trevor Denman, a legend in Peters’ eye, and won by Tecla Bluff, and the young wannabee knew he had a class act to follow.
“I was extremely nervous,” he says of his July debut. “I was shaking. The tips of my fingers were numb. It’s the biggest race in Africa. You’ve got the crowd’s reaction. You’ve got to modulate your voice. There are so many things to think about.”
Peters’ first Durban July was won – and he’ll never forget this – by Devon Air, trained by Terrance Millard, famous for dubbing his horse, Empress Club “the galloping goldmine”. The young commentator was invited back the following year and has more-or-less become a Durban July and national institution bar for two years.
One year he missed due to Covid-19 and before one July he and his employers – I’m going to be genteel here, so as to not hurt anyone’s feelings – couldn’t decide whether they were saddling up the same horse or racing the same race, so decided to temporarily part company.
The year before his official debut – 1983, in other words – was an intriguing one in terms of the race’s development. Up until the 1984 race, the Durban July had a dead zone or terra incognita section of the track from a commentator’s point-of-view.
This was because the Drill Hall blocked the commentator’s view from the 1600 meter to the 1400 meters mark, so another commentator was sent to fill in commentary for the 200 meters during which the anchor commentator couldn’t see the race.
In 1983 that person was Peters, with the main commentary duties being taken by Denman.
Not only was Denman very good, he was very ambitious, and after the 1983 July, he made his way to the US, where he has enjoyed a long and illustrious career. His move created a place on the card for Peters and he jumped – ahem – into the saddle the following year. Like all good jockeys, he hasn’t looked back since.
As luck, technological innovation and circumstance would have it, 1984 also happened to be the first year that the Durban July, the fourth race on the card, was televised. This made life considerably easier for the new man.
Rather than outsourcing commentary duties for 200 meters to a colleague, he simply watched the TV monitor in the commentary booth for the 200 meters that he couldn’t see. With that section of the race completed, he returned to his binoculars to call them home.
The horse’s names in the 1984 race provide us a glimpse of a bygone age. Some listeners might recognize one or two of them. There was a “Charles Fortune” in the 1984 race, for example, and a “Versailles” and a “Count du Barry”, an “Artic Cove”, a “Spanish Pool” and a “Spring Wonder.”
Other than having a sharp mind, a good memory and a clear voice, Peters says that the most important thing for a caller to remember is you’ve got to tell the listener (or the viewer) where the horses are on the course and where they are in relation to each other.
What does this mean, exactly? It means constantly reminding the listener that, say, the leaders are passing the 1400 meters mark, or they are hitting the home stretch with, say, 500 or 600 meters to go. If you are commentating on the track’s public address system it is roundabout here that you begin to hear the crowd in the affects mic.
They’re getting up off their seats. Sometimes they’re standing and, without really meaning to, walking closer to the track for a better view. They are shouting, sometimes whipping their legs absent-mindedly with a rolled-up version of the form guide.
They are shouting some more, sometimes shouting themselves hoarse for their horse. If you are in the commentary booth at such a time you can’t but be thrilled at the surge of hope and excitement that you experience as you call them in, knowing that beneath you the punters are going beserk with expectation.
Saturday’s July is a race over 2200 meters, so is neither a sprint nor a marathon. No length is ideal but 2200 meters is manageable because it allows the man behind the microphone to enjoy his work without feeling unduly pressured.
It also allows him the license of flourish or whimsy or even – occasional – good-natured cheesiness. Who can forget, for example when, in the 2018 race Peters said about the horse African Night Sky, “…and African Night Sky is reaching for the stars”.
Understandably, some Durban Julys stand out more than others for Peters. The 1984 race will always linger longer because it was his debut, but he also singles out the races of 2011 (won by Igugu), 2013 (won by Heavy Metal) and 2018 (won by Do it Again) as Julys he is proud of.
For sheer edge-of-your-seat thrills, however, the race of 2008 stands out because it was so close, with Dancer’s Daughter and Pocket Power making a last-gasp lunges for the line. Both were behind pace-setters Russian Sage and Strategic News for most of the race, and were still behind when the mare, River Jetez, thundered in front with about 300 to go.
River Jetez couldn’t hold on until the finish and, with only meters to go – and hysteria mounting – Dancer’s Daughter and Pocket Power made their play down the middle of the track.
We take up commentary with River Jetez on the outside, with Russian Sage still holding on gamely to the lead with the line in sight.
You’ll notice in this snippet that Peters’ intentionally doesn’t call the winner. It is one of his articles of faith that he doesn’t split the horses and pretend to know who the winner is in a too-close-to-call race and leaves that to the judges. “Why do you want to be the clever guy?” he asks rhetorically.
It was just as well he wasn’t the clever guy in 2008 because history tells us that the race ended up being the one of July’s few dead heats. River Jetez faded and Russian Sage was well and truly left out on the tundra and Dancer’s Daughter and Pocket Power dashed for the line as if their lives depended on it.
Despite the comparatively easy gig when he called Big Swinger to the win in his Gosforth Park debut as a youngster, Peters still had much to learn in the beginning. He went to elocution lessons. He was told to read as much as he could get his hands on. It was important to be attentive to detail in the manner of a writer or a forensic scientist.
He was told by the legendary Australian horse-racing commentator, Bill Collins, that it is a mistake to get stuck on a jockey whose colours you can’t immediately identify – simply move on to the rest of the field, and come back to the jockey when the field has opened up.
In recent years, as South Africa has changed and become more equitable, Peters has had to brush up on his isiZulu, as horses with Zulu names and black jockeys come under starter’s orders. If he’s not sure about pronunciation, he asks. And he practices. Woe Betide the commentator who snags on a difficult to pronounce name as the horses are rounding the false rail and heading for home.
Peters has commentated on approximately 25 000 horse races as he’s also learned a few tricks of the trade. In the 2008 race, for instance, which was almost a dead heat between Pocket Power and Dancer’s Daughter, he can be heard identifying a horse by his nose band.
Anything to get his head in front.
The 2008 race shows him at his accurate best. During the race he tells us all we need to know about where the horses are and where they are in relation to each other, but he also manages to smuggle into his commentary some value-added extras.
He estimates, for example, that the field from first to last is spread out over 16 meters. At another point in his passage of commentary he tells us that the pace is on the slow side. It all adds up to a complete package, in which the listener is told everything – and more – of what he needs to know.
Races traditionally don’t last for more than a few minutes, depending on distance, of course, but you still can’t make any mistakes. This is what makes horse-racing commentary so demanding, particularly if it is of the on-course variety.
Peters has commentated on Boxing, go-carting, show-jumping, cycling, BMX and polo. Nothing, however, compares to the intensity of the Durban July in its demands.
So good has Peters become at his craft that he even has a nickname to go with it. He has been called “Eagle Eye” for his ability to tell a potential winner from 300 or 400 meters out, an ability that has made him a firm favourite with the punters.
The monicker distinguishes him from the much-loved Aussie caller, Ken Howard, whose nickname was “magic eye.” Not only did “magic eye” have a cool nickname, he had a calling card which he used to dispense with a flourish each and every race, telling the punters that such and such a horse was “London to a brick on.”
Here is a splendid example of Howard’s commentary from a race in Aussie in 1972 just so we have a feel of what he was all about.
Commentating on the Durban July (and commentating in general) seem to be a sort-of wonder-drug for Peters. Listening to a cross-section of his 37 Durban Julys I am struck by how ageless his voice is. Here is the voice of someone who was born to do what he does and who loves what he was born to do. We could be listening to someone half his age rather than a man who was 66 on his last birthday.
Given his comparative agelessness, it is perhaps no surprise that he likens himself to the Welsh Wonderboy, Tom Jones. Big swinger that he is, Tom apparently still makes the ladies swoon well into his eighties. “If the voice is there, the memory is there and the eyesight is there,” Peters says. “Then there’s no need to even think about retiring.”
Maybe it’s more than simply having the voice-that-never-ages? The “more” in this case might be that Peters grows younger the more Julys he calls. Indeed, as the race ages, so Peters seems to grow younger in his telling of the race’s story. Perhaps he shouldn’t be nicknamed Eagle Eye, but Benjamin Button, the character from the film, the Curious Case of Benjamin Button, in which Button is born old and becomes younger as the movie progresses towards its inevitably sad conclusion as Button dies the moment he is born.
When asked if he has considered insuring his voice, given that it is such an important part of his professional identity, Peters replies that he hasn’t. It is something he might have once considered. Now it is too late.
Whether Peters has an ageless voice or whether the event he gives his voice to makes him eternally youthful, this much is true: despite the temporary glamour of an event here and there, the Golden Age of horseracing seems to be well and truly over.
Once was the time when, in apartheid South Africa, you could only gamble on the gee-gees. Now, with the help of your smartphone, you can have a flutter on anything from under-water hockey in the Tasmanian first division, to darts in a smoky hall in Rochdale outside of Manchester.
“They’ll settle down for a run to the judge,” used to be one of the Aussie caller, Howard’s, more famous lines, and maybe it’s true of horse-racing in the wider sense? Maybe horse-racing as we know it is settling down for its run to the judge, that judge being the march of time, the only judge and the judge of them all?
For do we not all feel, at some level of our being, that horse-racing is going only one way, the way of smoky pubs, cafes, Coke in bottles, neighbourhood greengrocers, landlines, newspapers and petrol guzzling cars?
Do I confuse an event with an industry? Maybe the events will live on, thanks, in a small way, to the re-assuring comforts of Peters’ commentary in the case of the July, while the gambling part of horse-racing will take up a smaller and smaller fraction of the online market?
Peters, the young man who cut his teeth on Big Swinger at Gosforth Park all those years ago, seems determined that this will not be so. He will continue to occupy the land of “I-know-this-guy’s-voice” even if you don’t know who this guy is at all.
As such, he has become that most precious and wonderful thing. He has become part of the aural fabric – part of the soundscape – of our everyday lives. Such figures play small walk-on parts in the chorus line of our lives. They give voice to our everyday melodies. They are our cultural historians without ever claiming to be cultural historians in the slightest.
They allow us to chart the seasons, the months, the years. They contribute to our memories, giving them shape, making them robust so they will last. We take them for granted and, then, suddenly, they are gone and we are bereft. We think to ourselves guiltily that we should have taken better care of them when they were around.
Peters and his voice are as much an institution as the institution that he has become famous for describing over 2200 meters. Not bad for a Lebanese kid from Mayfair who didn’t finish school. Not bad at all.
