Chelsea Durand Photo

Aqueduct track announcers mix youth and experience

by Bob Ehalt

As winter approaches, New York racing will have a different look - and sound – from the summer.

With the December 7 opening of the winterized inner track at Aqueduct, a new season of New York Racing Association (NYRA) action began with a tag-team of announcers to call the races.

During the winter months, Travis Stone and John Imbriale will divide time in the announcer’s booth, stepping in for Larry Collmus, who will return to the microphone in early April, and give NYRA a pair of respected voices to call each day’s races.

“We have two of the best announcers in the industry here right now in Travis and John. It’s a great luxury for us to have,” said Dan Silver, NYRA’s Director of Television. “We feel a great responsibility at NYRA to offer a top guest experience in every facet of our business, from guest services to our online products. Our announcers play a big part in how people experience our races, so it’s very important for us to have top-class announcers.”

In Stone and Imbriale, NYRA has a mix of one of the best young talents in the industry and a popular and highly familiar veteran announcer who has been involved in New York racing since the days before the other was born.

Stone became part of the NYRA team in 2014 and returns to Aqueduct after his second year of working as the track announcer at Churchill Downs, where he was the track’s voice for the Kentucky Derby. A native of Schroon Lake, New York, the 32-year-old Stone has been an avid fan of New York racing since childhood and was thrilled to return to his roots and call races at Aqueduct.

“I’m from upstate New York and followed Aqueduct racing all my life,” said Stone, who will rotate with Imbriale and call three weeks of racing to Imbriale’s one. “It was like a homecoming to come back to where I started watching racing and where I enjoyed it.”

Since his teenage days, Stone had a fervent desire to be a track announcer and Imbriale helped to make it happen.

When was Stone was about 13, he reached out to Imbriale and then-NYRA announcer Tom Durkin during the Saratoga meet, telling them about his passion for calling races. In January, Imbriale invited Stone to spend an afternoon at Aqueduct, letting him call the races from a room adjacent to the announcer’s booth.

“Travis called the races from a vacant office with a tape recorder and then I listened to them and we went over it. He had a talent for it,” Imbriale said. “When I was young and (former NYRA announcer) Marshall Cassidy worked with me on my calls, I worked in the same spot. You have to get a feel of being there to do a call properly. You can’t do it by watching on television. You have to be here to see everything.”

That afternoon at Aqueduct gave Stone a respect for Imbriale that has not diminished over the years.

“John is a great announcer and I’ll always have a soft spot for him for allowing me to hang out with him that one day,” said the versatile Stone, who was NYRA’s oddsmaker at Saratoga earlier in the year and will make appearances on NYRA’s “Talking Horses” simulcast show throughout the winter. “He’s a lot of fun, a good guy, one of the best people in racing, truly.”

Through knowing Imbriale and Durkin, Stone sharpened his skills by calling races from the roof of the Saratoga pressbox in 2004 and 2005 and used them in a demo tape that landed him his first announcing job at Louisiana Downs in 2006.

He later replaced Collmus at Monmouth in 2014 and a year later followed in Collmus’ footsteps once again when he took over at Churchill Downs after Collmus joined NYRA in 2015.

Collmus figured in another key moment in Stone’s career as at the age of 18 he called his first two races at Suffolk Downs during Collmus’ tenure at the Massachusetts track.

Long before Stone’s first call, Imbriale joined NYRA in 1979 after winning a New York Daily News contest to be a guest announcer and has been a valuable jack-of-all-trades since then. Though his title at NYRA is Director of Television Production, he has spent more than three decades calling races as a backup announcer and serving as the host of various NYRA television shows.

While he worked as winter announcer for more than 15 years during Durkin’s vacations, Imbriale enjoyed his moment in the spotlight after Durkin’s retirement in August 2014 when he served as NYRA’s  lead announcer until Collmus came on board the following April. He did such a fine job of handling the numerous Grade 1 stakes on NYRA’s Super Saturday at Belmont Park that Durkin was profuse in his praise for Imbriale’s work.

"John is the ultimate pro," Durkin said in a 2014 interview. "Those were big-time races on Jockey Club Gold Cup day and John came up with big-time descriptions of them. He struck a perfect tone."

Though perfectly content to work in the background, the 62-year-old Imbriale admits he derived considerable satisfaction from his time as NYRA’s lead announcer.

“I wanted to see if I could it do and do it at a decent level. I was anxious and nervous about it. I knew there would be big races,” he said. “I can be a perfectionist, but all in all I was happy how it went and there was some satisfaction that I was the main guy.”

And now he’s one of the main guys with Travis Stone during a winter that will have a familiar and top-notch sound to it.