By a quarter of a nose

By David Nagel
WHEN Rain Lover won the Melbourne Cup in 1968 it triggered a passion inside a then 14-year-old Bill Quin that has been with him ever since.
Little did Quin know back on that fifth day of November 43 years ago that he himself would now be a key player in Australia’s most famous horse race.
Quin, 57, from Berwick, has been the full-time racing industry judge since 1996 and this year had the nation in the palm of his hand, literally, when he had to split Dunaden and Red Cadeaux in the Flemington two-miler.
“When Rain Lover won the Cup in ’68 I started dreaming of being a race caller,” Quin said on holidays in Tasmania earlier this week.
“I started doing phantom calls at home for Dad, all I wanted to do was call races.”
Quin went to radio school in 1974 and practiced his craft at the Showgrounds trotting track, training alongside other hopefuls such as Terry Clifton, who later went on to become a leading caller in Victoria.
He also learnt his craft at Flemington, in a spare caller’s box, armed with a tape recorder and a home-made stand he used to hold his binoculars steady.
“Look, I wasn’t a natural caller and I really lacked self-belief. I ended up calling at Stawell and Avoca and a lot of non-TAB meetings and made a few bucks on the side selling cassette tapes to winning connections,” he said.
In 1986, an opportunity presented itself for Quin to be assistant judge to George Davey throughout the Ballarat District. He progressed from there to the city tracks and in 1996 took up his current role as industry judge. He judged his first Melbourne Cup in 1999 when Rogan Josh saluted him.
“That was a good year to start, six horses crossed the line within a length and a half of each other, that got the heart racing,” he said.
This year’s Cup was the closest in history and when the two horses crossed the line the old race caller’s instincts kicked in.
“I thought it was dead-heat, I still call the races in my head, I draw an imaginary line down the middle of my body through to the winning post and I couldn’t split them,” Quin said.
“As soon as I saw the print I was confident we could split them, we just had to go through the process.”
That process consists of enlarging the print and then running a keen eye through a magnifying glass. If that still can’t split the hopefuls, then technology is called on.
“These days with computers we can actually pull the line away from the horse’s nose and then slowly bring it back in again, that way you stop when you hit the first nose and it normally gives you a margin,” Quin said.
“This year was a tough one. Red Cadeaux has a white patch on his nose so it was tough to make that out from the pale green background.
“If you had given it an official margin I reckon a quarter of a nose would be most accurate.
“ The Viewed versus Bauer photo from 2008 was half a nose.”
Quin said that due to the professionalism of his team he didn’t feel any extra pressure on the big stage, but when the job was done he did have time to reflect.
“Sometimes you just sit there and think, “What have I just done”.
Quin said Taj Rossi, Northerly and Dulcify were some of his favourite horses but one stood out from the crowd.
“Makybe Diva – I love the stayers and she was just brilliant.”