The race that stops the nation doesn’t stop everyone.

In Melbourne, taxi drivers, nurses, bartenders and others keep working, so that the rest of us can enjoy Cup Day.

With millions expecting to listen to the live radio broadcast of the Cup, Tom Kazas, who works in the Radio Master Control Room at the ABC’s Southbank studios Melbourne, is one of those who will not be having time off today at race time.

He will be responsible for making sure the race is successfully fed to ABC stations around the country.

In a special report about people working on Cup Day, Kazas told ABC774’s Simon Brown that the station’s race day OB will be presented and produced on-site at Flemington, then fed back on a digital telephone line to the Southbank studios.

While most ABC stations just take the call of the big race, local station 774 ABC Melbourne broadcasts live all day from the Member’s Stand.

“They will be head of network and they will run it from there. We will send that up, most likely, on a satellite and other states can down-link the audio,” said Kazas.

If the line from Flemington fails, he will switch to a back-up line, and if that fails he will be on the phone to the OB to quickly work out what to do next.

“There’s no need to be extra nervous … because we do a lot of national feeds… We just need to have our plan ready to go,” Kazas told Simon Brown.

And on 3AW, a young teenager has made his mark on the race calling industry with a phanton call this year. Maybe in future, he will also be working professionally on Cup Day.

With veteran Jack Strying unavailable this year due to illness, it seemed fitting that 3AW’s Ross and John turned to an aspiring broadcaster, Travis Noonan, to fill his void for this year’s phantom call of the Melbourne Cup.