The Collmus Interview
Patrick Patten interviews Suffolk Downs-Aqueduct-Monmouth announcer Larry Collmus. Among Collmus’ favorite lines from calls past: “My best lines were off the cuff. My favorite would be when Cigar made his move in the 1996 MassCap, I said ‘There goes the Legend.’ I don’t think anyone had called him that before. I liked it. He certainly was a legend.”
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Noticed this tossed-off phrase in a Jay Cronley ESPN column today: “Women can’t call races?” Which made me wonder — is there now, or has there ever been, a woman calling races at any thoroughbred track?
3/30 Update: I knew there had to be female track announcers somewhere. A correspondent wrote in today to say: “Yes, in Japan and Korea, some women call races. Yasuko Iguchi, the first woman announcer of horseracing in Japan, had called JRA races from 1971 to 1995 on live broadcast of Radio Nippon. Kayo Koeda also is woman announcer at Hokkaido tracks. Kim Su-Jin became the first woman announcer in Korea.”
