Announcer Dave Johnson's signature “…and down the stretch they come” call as a field enters the final straightaway is practically as synonymous with horse racing as the “Call to Post.” As Amanda Duckworth writes in Thoroughbred Racing Commentary, those words continue to support various facets of the horse racing industry long after Johnson left the announcer's booth.
In the early 2010s, Johnson trademarked the phrase “and down the stretch they come,” after seeing companies as large as Amazon make money off merchandise with the saying Johnson coined, without his permission.
Though he has brought in more than a quarter of a million dollars off the rights to that phrase over the past decade, Johnson has donated the proceedings to a wide variety of charities within the racing sphere, between both the Thoroughbred and Standardbred realms.
Beneficiaries of Johnson's donations based off the phrase's rights have included New York's Backstretch Employee Service Team (BEST), Churchill Downs' Backside Learning Center, and various scholarships including the University of Arizona's Racetrack Industry Program.
“It wasn't to make money, and I have not kept a nickel from it,” Johnson told Thoroughbred Racing Commentary. “I did it because so many people were using it however they wanted, and they weren't even asking permission. It was just to stop them from doing that. The important thing is that if the phrase is being used, it's then helping those in the game that can really use it.”
Read more at Thoroughbred Racing Commentary.
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