Announcer Jukich is still the ‘holler guy’
From atop Hastings thoroughbred venue, he can see a lot more than track below
The ship, later research would discover, was just about as long as the Eiffel Tower is tall, and itself as high as a 16-storey building.
“How can you not love this job?” Dan Jukich asked, a small amount of wonder in his voice, despite 38 years overall in the business. “I’ve never seen one that big.”
He was pointing to a mammoth pink and white Scandinavian cargo ship that tugs were realigning alongside the Vancouver docks.
“I’ve seen fires at the wharf, fires in the mountains, you name it. The only thing I’ve not seen, I’ve not seen whales in the sound.
“Does this feel like a job? No, no it does not.”
Since 1990, Jukich’s perch has been atop Hastings Racecourse with its superb views of Burrard Inlet and the Coast Mountains. And the track below, of course. Like the late, legendary Jack Short, Jukich announces every start with: “There they go!”
Like his father Roy, a Vancouver Sun sports writer in the day, Jukich attended East Van’s Van Tech Secondary School. So did his two kids.
“Three generations at one high school, you won’t find that anymore,” he said.
He still plays baseball (“Baseball, not softball”) Saturday mornings before heading to the track. He usually can’t stay for all the innings, but the guys on the Vancouver Pirates over-44s understand, he said.
Winters, he still blades up for games of hockey with a group of nearby longshoremen.
Having had no broadcast or public announcing experience before starting out, Jukich began calling standardbred races at Cloverdale’s Fraser Downs in 1979, and still calls races there today at what’s now known as Elements.
In 1990, he added the thoroughbreds at Hastings Park and he credits his sports background for his leather lungs and a voice that is as strong today at 63 as ever.
“In soccer I was the goalie, so I was the holler guy. In baseball, I played first base, I was the holler guy.
“If you look at it that way, I was always talking and it just kept on going.”
Only once, early in his career, did a sore throat bother him, he said.
“To me it sounded terrible, but over the microphone it sounded OK.”
Horse racing in Vancouver got its modest start in 1889 when a horse named Mayflower won the $250 first-place prize in the Vancouver City Stakes. The race was held on what is now Howe Street, Hastings Park spokesman Greg Douglas said.
“Saner heads prevailed and shortly thereafter horse racing moved to Hastings East, where the present day Hastings Racecourse still stands, some 118 years later,” Douglas said.
A lot has changed since Jukich joined in 1990, too.
It’s more family and entertainment oriented, he said.
“You can spend $2 a race and enjoy yourself for a few hours for just 16 bucks.”
There are simulcasts, including races such as the Kentucky Derby and the Queen’s Plate. There are special events, such as one coming on Father’s Day when the likes of Gino Odjick, Cliff Ronning, Lui Passaglia, Jim “Dirty 30” Young, Carl Valentine and Bob Lenarduzzi lead a cast of distinguished alumni from the Canucks, Lions and Whitecaps.
Jukich, an inductee into the B.C. Horse Racing Hall of Fame, has also had the pleasure of working with his son Matt, who now calls the races at Northlands in Edmonton. His daughter Courteney works in a midwife clinic, his wife Stephanie has “kept all the glue together.”
It is remarkable to watch him switch seamlessly between small talk and projecting his voice over the loudspeakers for the race.
“Hold on a second,” he said halfway through a story, so he could introduce the horses to the crowd.
“Where was I? Oh yeah ...” and he finished the story.
Then just as quickly, his head swivelled to the starting gate: “There they go!”