Down to the wire

Down to the wire

“Down to the wire” is an expression we use when a situation or event will not be decided or resolved until the very last moment. The outcome is uncertain until the end.

Origin in horse racing

It’s helpful to think about the origin of this expression. Imagine the early days of horse racing, before there were high-performance cameras. In those days, a thin wire was extended across the finish line. The wire helped judges determine which horse won the race when the race was close.

In horse racing today, cameras take 2,000 frames per second and they help judges determine the winner. But the expression survives. A horse race that “comes down to the wire” is a very close race, with two or more horses in close competition until the last second—or tenth of a second—of the race.

In physical racing

Because of its origin, “down to the wire” is used in other types of races too. If you watch the track and field or swimming competitions in the Summer Olympics, or the ice-skating competition in the Winter Olympics, then you know what it’s like to watch a race that comes down to the wire. In most of those competitions, one second or less separates the gold medal winner from the rest.

But even sports like cycling and the marathon can come down to the wire. In the men’s marathon in the 2024 Summer Olympics, Ethiopian Tamirat Tola won gold with a time of 2 hours, 6 minutes, and 26 seconds. The silver medal winner finished twenty-one seconds later.

So it wasn’t difficult to see who won: you could see that with your eyes. But only twenty seconds separated the gold and silver winners in a two-hour race. Twenty-one seconds may seem like a lot in Olympic sports, but it’s a pretty close marathon. To put that in perspective , Tamarit Tola won the 2023 New York Marathon by two whole minutes. You would not say that race came down to the wire—he was the clear winner of that race.

Other athletic competitions—non-races—can come down to the wire. A soccer game that is tied after the first 89 minutes of play comes down to the wire: the winner will be determined at the end, either in the last minute or in an overtime period if the rules allow it.

In other competitions

While “down to the wire” originated with racing and is often used in athletics, it can be used in other types of competitions, too.

Elections can come down to the wire. With some elections, you know the result before Election Day. Britain’s Labour Party won 411 seats in the 2024 election ; the next-highest vote winner got 121 seats in the 650-seat Parliament. Obviously, we didn’t know the specific result ahead of time . But the Labour victory was never in doubt. You would not say that one came down to the wire.

But the American election in 2024 is a different story. I’m recording this in late August 2024. The most respected average of polls shows Kamala Harris winning 47.6 percent of the vote and Donald Trump winning 47.1 percent, if the election were held today. That’s a difference of 0.5 percent, within most polls’ margin of error.

To further complicate things, the U.S. election isn’t decided based on the national tally of votes. It all depends on how the individual states vote. As of August 2024, I don’t know who’s going to win. But I do know that it will come down to the wire. The race is too close. We’re not going to know the winner until the race ends. That’s what it means for an election to come down to the wire.

In non-competitions

All the examples I’ve given you so far are about who wins a close competition: a horse race, a marathon, a soccer game, or an election. And that is the most common way to use “down to the wire”. But you can also use “down to the wire” if something might not be successful before a deadline.

Imagine a company and a labor union are in negotiations. The current labor contract runs out at 11:59 p.m. on a Friday. If there’s no new deal by then, the workers go on strike. And imagine that Tuesday passes—no new contract. Wednesday passes—no deal. Thursday comes and goes—still nothing.

The negotiations are coming down to the wire. They will be resolved—or not—immediately before the deadline. The last minutes are crucial. There isn’t much time to spare. If they sign a deal on Friday afternoon, or early evening on Friday, you can say the negotiations came down to the wire. That means, they were only resolved a short time before the deadline.

See you next time!

And that’s all for us here at Plain English. “Down to the wire” is a good expression to know, although you won’t use it too often.

Speaking of down to the wire and the American elections, we’ll talk more about election day in the U.S. in October. We have an unusual way of determining the winner of the presidential elections here—it’s not just adding up all the votes. We’ll do at least one episode about that. And I’m also planning one episode about the vice presidency: what does the vice president even do? Is that job important?

So we’ll do those in October as we get ready for our national elections on November 5.

But for now, that’s all for today’s Plain English. Remember to get the full transcript and all the exercises and resources for today’s episode at PlainEnglish.com/707.

See you back here on Monday.