Dan Loiselle, the iconic voice of Canadian horse racing, celebrates his 25th anniversary calling thoroughbred races at Woodbine Racetrack on Saturday and his 44th year with the Woodbine Entertainment Group, the company that owns and operates the famed facility. Loiselle broke in with the company, then known as the Ontario Jockey Club, as an assistant race secretary in the standardbred division and backup announcer on Aug. 1, 1967, before assuming the thoroughbred reins from legendary racecaller Daryl Wells on July 23, 1986. Senior writer Rob Sinclair spoke to Loiselle about the milestone and his (ongoing) career:

Q: How do you plan to approach your silver anniversary?

To be quite honest, to me, it's just another day. But it seems some other people are making quite a bit deal of it. I got to thinking, there was another announcer in California named Trevor Denman that's probably been at the same racetrack for a couple of years longer than me. I think he started at Santa Anita and Hollywood Park in Del Mar in 1984 and I started in 1986, so I guess I'm probably the announcer that has the second-longest tenure of any announcer in North America — currently, anyways.

Q: How many races have you called, you think?

You know, I called harness races before I called thoroughbred and I did that for about 17 years, so I started adding it up the other day and I think I'm just over 50,000. That's a lot of races.

Q: Has your call changed over the years and, if so, how?

You know, when I started calling thoroughbred races in '86 for, then, the Ontario Jockey Club, now Woodbine Entertainment, I replaced a legend — a guy named Daryl Wells, who was the only voice that Woodbine had ever known. And here comes this harness punk in to replace the legend. And I listen back to some of those calls in 1986 and I start to blush I feel so embarrassed. They were that bad, I thought. But the company stuck by me and I have evolved into a style of my own and I'm glad the company stuck it out … you grab bits and pieces — when you're starting — from other announcers. But you're own style evolves and I like to think mine has, too.

Q: What have you discovered goes into making a successful call?

A couple of things. First of all, you have to have clarity. You have to enunciate, you have to be clear. And you have to have accuracy. If people can't understand you and your calls aren't accurate, you're just not going to cut it. Those are the two biggest things, in my mind. Not to blow racetrack announcers' horns, that's not my intent. But it's a little more difficult than a lot of people think because, in hockey, there's stoppages in play, football, between downs, baseball, between pitches, and the prevalent distance in thoroughbred racing in North America is 3/4 of a mile, which takes a minute and 10 seconds and you have a field of 14 horses hurtling towards you and the worst thing you can have in a race call is dead air. There has to be a flow to it and a tempo and a buildup, so it's a little more difficult than a lot of people think.

Q: I would think a lot of people have no idea where you're situated, how you're situated — are you standing, are you sitting, are you standing, are you watching on a monitor, are you watching live. Can you give us a sense of what goes on in the booth?

Yep, I'm six floors up and I have two sets of binoculars. You call thoroughbred races by associating the silks the jockeys are wearing with the horses' names. You don't look at the numbers. So when they come out on post parade, when I'm introducing them to the people 10 minutes to post, you start memorizing. You look and you say, "Blue and white checks, that's Secretariat. Turquoise with gold dots, that's Northern Dancer." And you memorize a field that could be as many as 14. In fact, at the Queen's Plate this year, we had 17. You memorize those horses until they go to the gate, you call the race and then you immediately forget about them and memorize another field of 14. It gets difficult sometimes when horses are in tight quarters. Unlike harness racing, there's no sulky separating these horses, so sometimes they get going into the turn and there's four or five abreast and you're looking just for a glimpse of a sleeve colour or a cap colour that you can identify the horses. I use a set of high-powered binoculars called Canon Image Stabilizer binoculars. They're expensive as heck — they're, like, $2,000 — but there's a little stabilizer button on top and you hit this butotn and it stabilizes the image like a television camera, so when the horses are on the turf course, which is the furthest away from me, you can almost see the sweat on the horse's neck. They're that great.

Q: How much do you improvise?

Moreso over the years. I like to editorialize a little bit and let poeple know how horses are travelling. Horses can tell you a lot just by watching at them. You see a horse moving around a turn, his ears right up in the air, that horse is saying to the jockey, "OK, what do you want me to do next, I'm happy." A horse's ears are pinned back against its neck, he's not a happy animal out there. He might be fully extended or just not comfortable in his circumstances [or he] might be in crowded quarters and not comfortable with that. And a jockey's body language. If he's sitting there frozen on a horse and they're coming to the top of the stretch, it gives me the impression he's got a lot of horse under him. If he's scrubbing, as they say, or pushing on the horse's neck, then he's asking his horse for more and he might be empty, so I like to editorialize a bit. But I don't like to do it at the expense of the race. The story is the race. The story isn't the announcer, so you want to complement it, you don't want to become the show as far as I'm concerned.

Q: Do you plan ahead or think of set phrases for key moments or do you just live in the moment?

I've got a great friend who calls races in New York, in fact, Saratoga in upstate New York. His name is Tom Durkin … called the Breeders' Cup for 20 some odd years. He has a book where he compiles phrases for different spots in the race, so he started me doing this. I have a book in the booth and I have it in four categories: start ( start of the race ); general ( the body of the race ), through the stretch and at the finish. And over 25 years, I've grabbed certain phrases, update it regularly, put it in this book. We have a 167-day racing season, so when I find myself getting a little stale … I'll glance in this book and say, "Well, there's something I haven't used in a long time." If the opportunity presents itself, I'll slide that into a race call and that prevents me from going stale.

Q: Basically, your little bag of tricks...

Exactly. When Inglorious won the Queen's Plate, I thought to myself, "If she's clear, if she's in front by two or three lengths, I might say, 'A fantastic race by a fantastic filly'" — she was the only filly in the field — and, lo and behold, she opened up two or three lengths and I got to say that.

Q: How many more calls do you think you have in your future?

You know, I'm 59 and I'm not really sure. But I can pretty well guarantee I won't call races until I'm 65. I'm not overly concerned — but somewhat concerned — that I want to get out, I want to finish before I start to slip. I hope I know myself when I've slipped. Maybe people are already saying, "Boy, that Loiselle. Boy, he's lost it. It's time for him to hang it up," and I'm just not hearing it [laughs]. But I want to hang it up before I start to lose it a little and start to embarrass myself or embarrass a company that's been so great to me for so many years.

Q: What are you proudest of?

I guess the whole body of work. Like I said, I replaced a legend and I think the fans, especially the local fans, have embraced it, have embraced me. I get people coming up to me and sayng a lot of nice things. I guess they're not going to walk up and say, "You suck!" But I get a lot of people coming up and saying nice things. And I've got to call some fantastic races: 25 Queen's Plates, 5 [Canadian] Triple Crown champions from With Approval to Wando, Kentucky Derby winners — Funny Side raced at Woodbine. You know, I've been invited to six all-star announcer days. It doesn't exist anymore. But it was a day before Breeders' Cup at every venue where they'd invite a half-dozen announcers to call a race the day before the Breeders' Cup, so I've gotten to call races at Belmont Park — which, to a person involved in racing, a race announcer, it's like saying to a kid, "How'd you like to play a game at Yankee Stadium?" [And] I got to call a race at Churchill Downs, so for the rest of my life, when I'm watching the Kentucky Derby, [I can say], "I called a race at Churchill Downs." I've had just so many great thrills. I'm the master of ceremonies for our draws [at Woodbine, so I've interviewed people like Mickey Rooney and Alex Trebek and Tim Conway and Gordie Howe and Don Cherry and Donovan Bailey, so those are all great thrills.

Photo courtesy Michael Burns/Woodbine