Page 46 - March 2005 The Game
P. 46

46 The Game, March 2005 Your Thoroughbred Racing Community Newspaper
HORSE TV - CONTINUED FROM PAGE 27
"Stacie Clark Rogers is .Woodbine's in. I'll do Woodbine first. Stand by VR 6 audio. She's awesome. I love working with her.stand by Gulfstream. Stand by source two audio."
I find Stacie Clark Rogers in the HPItv set and that's a revelation. On television, it comes across as an impressive expansive studio. In reality, it's a little bigger than a broom closet. In fact, the anchors refer to it as "The Bubble". A large camera- friendly picture in the background gives the room its deceptive size. Clark Rogers sits behind a desk about four feet from a camera that is surrounded by ten
monitors to keep her up to speed on different odds, post parades and payoffs from various tracks.
The four main anchors for HPItv are Greg Unger, Elisa Blowe, Chris Hickey and Renee Kierens. On this day Stacie Clark Rogers has drawn in off the also-eligible list, but it isn't as if she doesn't have extraordinary past performance lines for the job. She studied film and television in university and, after that, spent two years as a jockey, winning 87 races. Every day she gallops ponies at Adena Springs. And doing the day shift means steering a lot of infor- mation the viewer's way.
"We put on a show before the races start," she says,
"We give our picks and let them know what our schedule is, what we're going to cover for the day. We do four tracks at a time. Sometimes we join a
racetrack in the middle of their program. We try and let people know when the race is coming up, what the odds are, maybe point out a long-shot
payoff."
A voice in her ear tells her to turn into the camera to make an important announcement.
"The four horse in the next race at Woodbine is a gelding, not a colt as indicated in the program."
On a typical dayshift, the HPItv anchor will connect the viewer to as many as 80 races. That's 80 win prices, 160 place, 240 show, exactors, triactors, daily doubles. Doesn't it make your head spin?
"Well, at first it did," laughs Clark Rogers.
As her shift runs down, she preps the crowd for much more racing,
"Windsor is going to join us at 6, Flamboro at 6:20, Rideau at 6:30, then later tonight as usual we will have Australian racing."
The evening anchor, 49 year-old Greg Unger is the perfect bookend to Stacie. His background is more with the standardbreds. He was a driver for a while, putting together 52 wins. There is a bright-eyed Steve Martin-esque quality about him, but Unger knows that this is much more air traffic control than a comedy spot on the Letterman show.
"I'd like to be Greg the funny guy," he admits,
"But you've got four tracks, sometimes five or six. You have four races in a row. By the time you've finished the fourth, you have to do four recaps. By the time you finish that, the first track's prices are up, so then you have to go through four prices."
Unger is using his fingers to illustrate four times four times four.
"So you've got four races, four stretch runs, four prices. Now the first track is ready for its next post parade so now you've got four post parades." He stops to catch his breath.
"You're always stacked up and constantly busy, so where's the time to be Greg the funny guy?"
Actually Unger has learned from a bad experience just how creative he should be on air.
"One time I called a group of horses that was unde- niably a weak field, a bunch of rats, and the track run- ning that race took exception to it, called up and it became a bit of an embarrassing situation. My job is to be a ringmaster, to put things into context for the people who are watching, without condescending to the person who knows a lot or without speaking above the head of the person who knows very little."
There's an incredible amount of information pulsing from the screen on a minute-to-minute, hour- to hour basis. Unger says, in a way, his responsibility is to assist the attention-challenged.
"What's important is, make sure you realize you're watching Santa Anita race seven because I guarantee you, people are making bets on the wrong tracks because they're losing their focus."
Which I guess makes Greg Unger the television version of Ritalin.
Several hours later, Unger has gone home and the good viewer is left to his own resources to determine outcomes at Australian tracks named Hawkesbury, Terang, Warwick Farm and Muswellbrooke.
From 12:30 pm post time at Aqueduct until the final race down under at about 3 am, some 130 races have galloped across the screen. Each one had a post parade. Each had a stretch rerun. Each had payoffs.
Only nine hours until it starts again.
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