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PEOPLE

 

YEAR: 2006

Reon Murtha, the voice of Canterbury racing for 47 years, will pull down the curtain on his race calling career after this year's NZ Cup Carnival in November.

His retirement has prompted a trans-Tasman search, but as Canterbury Jockey Club Chief Executive Tim Mills says, "they're pretty big boots to fill." However, Murtha's experience and depth of knowledge about racing won't be lost. NZRB Head of Broadcasting, Glen Broomhall, says Murtha will continue to work with the New Zealand Racing Board and use his lifetime of experience to contribute to the future of race broadcasting. "Reon's vast experience will be used to mentor a new generation of race callers, with a view to maintaining the high standards to which he has always been committed," Broomhall said.

Murtha's first introduction to racing was on the West Coast where his father was on the committee of the Reefton Jockey and Trotting Clubs and his grandfather was a Clerk of the Course. "It was a boyhood ambition of mine to become a race caller," he remembers. It all started in the late 1950s. A young man's dream of calling the best of them past the winning post was nurtured and practised by calling ice-cream stick races for his mates on the many small creeks and water races that surround the small, sleepy West Coast coal-mining township of Reefton. Reon Murtha, once NZ's only full time professional racecaller, describes those early races as "a feat of imagination. You had to use a lot of imagination to keep the flow going as the gaily painted ice-cream sticks, often named after popular racing stars of the day, floated down the mine water races," he recalls "They would get caught up in the brambles or eddies, and I would have to keep the commentary going, sometimes for ages."

"I was probably the youngest person to frequent the pubs in Reefton," Reon confesses, "but all with good cause." His father took over the agency for the 'Turf Digest' and 'Friday Flash', and Reon earned pocket-money operating the sale of these as a paper round. "I had a regular clientele of 109 customers, and what they didn't buy I would sell in the pubs around town."

In 1959, at the tender age of 17, Reon packed his bags and headed off to an interview at the Greymouth offices of the NZ Broadcasting Corporation. His dream - to be a race caller... But not yet, for it seemed his voice had not matured enough, and there were no vacancies at the time. However, he still joined the corporation as a technician. Little did he realise then that over the next years thousands would hear him call the winners of Inter-Doms, NZ Cups and strangely enough, royal weddings and papal visits.

In 1960, Reon's dreams finally began coming true. The Reefton Jockey Club, looking for a racecaller, asked him to try out for the position, sight unseen. They were not dissappointed. Reon used this opportunity to make a demonstration tape, and on the strength of this tape and several departures from the staff of the Greymouth broadcasting offices, he was appointed race caller to the Greymouth Trotting Club.

In the years that followed until his appointment as race caller with the Canterbury Jockey Club in 1969, Reon used the time to refine and hone to perfection his skills of race calling. He describes it as the skill of being able to put into words what your eyes can see, recognising colours and names, without interrupting the flow of the commentary.

While there was no official training for such a calling, he says training as a radio announcer on Greymouth radio stations helped him to use his voice and language in the right way and achieve his aspiration. But it isn't the easiest of professions to master. Many people can call famous past races as they happened, but few possess that extra ingredient of being able to talk about something the instant it happens, without interrupting the flow, when there are thousands of people hanging on to your every word. Each horse's name and colours have to be learned before the race starts; then when it is all over you instantly discard them and start afresh on a new set of horses for the next race.

Travelling back and forth across the Southern Alps to cover meetings on both sides of the island was hard work; so, in 1971, following the Inter-Doms, Reon packed his bags and transferred to the Christchurch offices of Radio NZ. From there, Reon's career has taken him all over the world. He has called Inter-Doms from Australia; attended the Red Mile in Lexington, Kentucky, in 1983; travelled to Europe in 1984 to attend the English Derby.

Invited as a guest commentator for the Royal wedding of Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson in 1986, Reon ranks that as his most memorable occasion. As part of the Radio NZ team covering the Commonwealth Games at Edinburgh, Reon was invited to join a team of eight commentators covering the wedding for the ABC, and his particular section was the royal procession to and from Westminster Abbey. "We had to translate the colour and spectacle of the occasion for the thousands of listeners world-wide. My most nervous moment ever."

His career since then has been studded with both thoroughbred and harness racing industry awards reflecting his outstanding contribution, as well as mainstream awards like the MNZM he received in 2005 for services to broadcasting.

Calling such historic races as the 1980 NZ Cup duel between Delightful Lady and Hands Down at Addington has contributed to scores of great memories, but Murtha is well known as an objective caller who doesn't allow his opinions and emotions to influence his commentating. It hasn't always been easy to subdue the excitement; for example, the South Island Thoroughbred Breeders Stakes in April this year, which was won by Ombre Rose, a filly he part-owns, was just one of seven wins in which he was able to call her home first. The professionalism he maintained on that occasion and at all times has earned him respect industry wide.

"Reon has been the voice of Addington since 1971," said Addington Raceway CEO Mike Godber. "His calls of the great NZ Cups and Inter-Dominion Finals have been heard and seen throughout Australasia and made him a legend in his own right. He is the last of a great era of radio commentators who called through the 1970s and 80s. Reon has been a true professional through his background training in radio, and he was just as effective on Trackside TV and ranks right up there with the legendary commentators Dave Clarkson and Peter Kelly," Godber said.

Mills says Murtha's retirement marks the end of an era. "Racing is an industry that revolves around horses, jockeys and trainers, but there are others who put an important mark on the game," Mills said. "Reon has been an outstanding personality on the turf. Generations of race followers gew up with his voice. His name was synonymous with racing in the south. He is a true grentleman of the game - you never hear a bad word about him. He will be very difficult to replace.


Credit: HRWeekly 4Oct06



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