Good as Gold

'Voice of NASCAR' remains mostly muted after TV deal

The voice is one of NASCAR's verbal signatures, the man behind it a travel agent's delight. Much of Eli Gold's broadcasting career has involved speed, both the description of it, and the actual exercise en route to airports, and without it, he's a bit lost.

"Yeah, I've been doing this for 26 years," Gold says of his racing play-by-play. "Virtually every week and then all of a sudden -- not. It's a change."

A longtime MRN fixture, Gold is in his second season on the sidelines. With no regular booth to work, he pops up whenever MRN needs him, calling a Busch series race, or serving as a turn announcer. It's not his preference, but he's glad for the work.

"I'll guess I'll do eight or 10, 12 races this year," Gold said recently. "Some as an anchorman -- non-Winston Cup -- and some as a turn announcer in the Winston Cup division."

Prior to last season, Gold was on the air every time the green flag dropped for a Cup event. He started with MRN in the mid 1970s as a turn announcer, eventually co-anchoring broadcasts with Barney Hall. Seven or eight years ago -- "I'm not much into numbers," says Gold -- he ventured into television, leaving MRN to become TNN's primary NASCAR voice.

Two seasons ago, a red-flag fell: NASCAR's decision to consolidate its television contracts meant only two final winners -- FOX, and NBC/TNT. It was a case of too many men and too few microphones, and without his MRN job to fall back on, Gold found himself out in the cold.

"You know, we used to see 10 minutes of a race on TV in those days on Wide World of Sports. I just liked NASCAR, what little bit I saw of it. So I called and called and called MRN and started pestering them for a job back in 1975." Eli Gold

"It was very, very difficult," he admits. "There were a couple of nights there where I was really in bad shape. I got on the phone and called [ESPN's] Bob Jenkins, who also got left out of the NASCAR picture and the two of us were not doing real well on the phone that night, I don't mind telling you. It was not terribly pleasant."

Cut off from NASCAR's people, participants, and the garage, Gold took consolation wherever he could find it. He has continued to host MRN's Tuesday night talk show, NASCAR Live, a program he has anchored for all 20 years of its existence. It began with 25 MRN affiliates; there are now 445 nationwide. The show airs from 7-8 p.m. EST each week, and usually features that week's race winner, plus NASCAR movers and shakers. Hosting it has filled a void, plus allowed Gold to appreciate his slower pace.

"There were some days when I said, 'You know, this isn't all bad,'" he says of the 2001 season, citing one June weekend aboard his boat with family and friends, an MRN broadcast bleating in the background.

"And when they said goodbye from Michigan, I turned the radio off and we continued our boat ride up the Intercoastal Waterway in North Carolina," says Gold. "And I was not running like a nut to catch that late flight out of the Detroit airport."

Airport and parking-lot sprints have defined Gold's professional life. A Brooklyn, N.Y., native, he fell in love with NASCAR while broadcasting minor league hockey; visits to the East Coast Hockey League's southern outposts exposed him to racing. His mid-'70s audition with MRN came on the strength of a hockey tape -- he was the initial television voice of the St. Louis Blues -- and a lifelong love affair was born.

"You know, we used to see 10 minutes of a race on TV in those days on Wide World of Sports," says Gold. "I just liked NASCAR, what little bit I saw of it. So I called and called and called MRN and started pestering them for a job back in 1975."

"I can't miss a football game, but 'Bama does allow me to miss basketball during Speed Weeks. They understand the sanctity of Speed Weeks in Daytona, which I always work for MRN, and MRN needs that commitment that if you're going to be there, you're going to work that whole week and a half -- two weeks." Eli Gold

Gold didn't have to pester anyone for his other major gig. He's been the voice of the University of Alabama Crimson Tide since 1988, and again, serendipity played a role. When Alabama officials were looking to fill their play-by-play opening, Gold was newspaper-mentioned as a possible candidate. A Birmingham-area resident, he was doing play-by-play that summer for the Detroit Tigers' Class AA affiliate, the Barons, and his wife called him during a road trip to tell him about the newspaper story.

"Well, I hadn't talked to a soul," says Gold. "I swear to God. But I guess they were just filling a column. The guy had column inches to fill, and he said, 'Well, I'll throw some names in.'"

Gold said he called Tide athletic officials just to joke about it, and got invited in for an interview. He's been the voice of 'Bama football and basketball ever since, and the central figure in many travel dramas. Picture a Saturday-night Alabama-Florida game in Gainesville, and a Winston Cup obligation the next day in New Hampshire. Or trekking from Fayetteville, Ark., to Dover, Del., overnight. It meant having drivers' private planes available at local airports -- for a fee, of course -- then falling into hotel beds at 3 a.m., before the early Sunday morning sprint to the track.

"But that's my life," Gold insists. "I love doing that. And what better to be sitting at the 50-yard-line for arguably the best football in America, the Southeastern Conference, and then hours later to be sitting at the start-finish line for the best racing in the world? I mean, it's a great job. You put up with the logistical nightmares to make that happen."

According to Gold, the logistics are less of a headache because his employers cooperate.

"I can't miss a football game," says Gold, "but 'Bama does allow me to miss basketball during Speed Weeks. They understand the sanctity of Speed Weeks in Daytona, which I always work for MRN, and MRN needs that commitment that if you're going to be there, you're going to work that whole week and a half -- two weeks.

"Then there are Busch races in the spring and fall when there are basketball and football conflicts that MRN and TNN would allow me to miss."

"It was very, very difficult. There were a couple of nights there where I was really in bad shape. I got on the phone and called Bob Jenkins who also got left out of the NASCAR picture and the two of us were not doing real well on the phone that night, I don't mind telling you. It was not terribly pleasant." Eli Gold

These days, Gold is feeling less and less like a Man Without a Sport, thanks to loyalty from his MRN friends and the part-time racing gigs; also because there's less man. The 48-year-old Gold has dropped 110 pounds from his 6-foot-2 frame, svelte now in his khakis and neon MRN shirt, a much healthier 230 pounds compared to his former heft of 334 pounds.

"I was doing a basketball game December of a year ago, and during the commercials I'd have to take these big gasps of breath to catch my wind back," says Gold. "I said, 'You know, this is stupid. I got a 12-year-old little girl at home and I want to see her go through life.' So I just decided to slowly get in shape, and I started walking 10 minutes a day, and then 15 minutes a day, then 20 minutes and sort of cutting back on the food. And it was tough. You live a life of gluttony, which I did, and then to conform to the norm, if you will, is a total behavioral change."

While Gold says fast food and junk wasn't a problem, living the good life without exercise was. A once-a-week ice cream cone is now a treat. Daily four-mile walks are de rigueur. And visits to a favorite New York City steak house are no longer cholesterol feasts.

"Now I'll go and I'll have their six or eight-ounce fillet," Gold says, shifting into play-by-play persona. "I won't have the 25-ounce, cattle-drive cut -- cut the bell off and walk that baby over here!"

A delightful conversationalist, Gold admits the relationships are what he misses most about not being at the race track every week; not just NASCAR people, but the folks who run racing and hospitality businesses in the Pocono mountains, and other locales.

"That's the kind of stuff I miss, not the hotel per se," says Gold. "'I wonder how old such-and-such is doing? Don't see him any more.' That's the weird part."

So he makes the best of his current career speed bump, heartened, he says, that Paul Brooks, NASCAR's vice president of broadcasting, is keeping him in mind, and grateful there was a gravity-defying platform awaiting him in a recent turn 4.

"I'll be dodging the chicken bones," Gold says cheerfully, sounding for all the world like someone who couldn't wait to get to work.

Denise N. Maloof covers NASCAR for CNNSI.com.

 

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