Globe Runner blog » Butcher’s Blog – Articles by Pat Butcher – VIC HOLCHAK, RIP

I lost contact with Vic around a decade ago, as interest in track and field athletics waned, and we couldn’t find media outlets to sponsor our globe-trotting any more. I’d occasionally try to contact him across the eight hours’ time difference between my London base, and his home in west Hollywood, but somehow we never managed to link up.

I got to know Vic when the Mobil GP circuit began in the mid-1980s. We would meet regularly over the next 20 years, mostly on the European circuit, but also at Olympic Games and World Champs, and also in London, where he had been a drama student, and still had contacts. He never talked about his acting career, and it took some time before someone spotted him in a TV movie. That wasn’t too difficult, because Vic was two metres tall – 6’6″.

He was self-deprecating about his acting qualities, but what was as unmistakable as his height was that great voice, just made for acting or preferably in his case, sports broadcasting. During his early years on the track circuit, he reported regularly for ABC Sports, but then created his own phone-in programme.

Vic was a great interviewer too; we, the other journos, would often listen in as he grilled someone, and we still use some of his catch-phrases, ie “Let me get this straight,” as he put someone on the spot….

The early days of the circuit were great fun, we mixed with all the stars, and had a good time away from the stadium too, visiting some of the great cities of the world – London, New York, Paris, Tokyo, LA, Barcelona, Rome, Oslo, Helsinki, Stockholm, Berlin, etc, as well as the totemic locations like Eugene, Rieti, Koblenz. One of the most amusing incidents I shared with Vic was in mid-1985. The day after Said Aouita broke the 1500m WR in Berlin, Vic hired a car, to go to the European Junior Champs, across the border in East Germany, as it still was then. I hitched a ride with him, and when we got back to the infamous Checkpoint Charlie later that night, there was no one there but us. The border guards disappeared with our passports, and we waited in the little wooden hut which served as the border post.

Two old West German women came in, and seeing no one else presented their passports to me. I merely indicated the closed hatch behind which the guards had disappeared. They went off down the corridor, and I looked up to see Vic shaking with laughter. When I looked at him quizzically, he indicated my shirt. This was all done like a mute-show, no one had spoken a word. What I didn’t realise was that I was wearing a short-sleeved buff coloured shirt, with epaulettes, which could easily pass as Army dress. For ages after, he referred to me as Staff-Sergeant Butcher, and we were still laughing at it the last time I saw him, which was on a visit to LA, when I dropped in to see him at his home in La Jolla, west Hollywood in 2006.

Vic was great company, with lots of stories, and not just about sport, he had wide interests including, obviously theatre and cinema. But sport, mostly track and field was his great love. He is much missed.

You can read a fuller obituary here, including details of Vic’s broader interests and accomplishments: https://obits.dignitymemorial.com/dignity-memorial/obituary.aspx?n=Victor-Holchak&lc=4802&pid=172740010&mid=6150883

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Posted on April 29, 2015 by Pat