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NYRA Announcer John Imbriale Announces Retirement

Track announcer John Imbriale has announced that he will retire following a 44-year career with the New York Racing Association.

Imbriale's tenure with NYRA dates to 1979 when he won a New York Daily News contest, giving him the opportunity to call a race and work with the NYRA press office. In 1990, the Queens, New York native became Tom Durkin's backup and along the way, took on other responsibilities at NYRA by working with Harvey Pack on the Inside Racing program, and in a variety of roles within NYRA TV.

“When I think about all the things that I was fortunate to do at NYRA, the best part was being able to work with a lot of talented, wonderful people, from Harvey Pack and Charlsie Cantey to Tom Durkin and all the behind-the-scenes people in NYRA TV, simulcasting and the press office,” said Imbriale.

In January of 2020, Imbriale took over as NYRA's full-time track announcer, joining former New York race callers that include Durkin, Marshall Cassidy, Dave Johnson, Chic Anderson and Fred “Cappy” Capossela.

He said, “When I walked into the booth at Saratoga for the first time after taking over as the full-time announcer in 2020, I literally got goose bumps thinking of those who had gone before me, greats like Fred Capossela, Marshall Cassidy, Chic Anderson, Dave Johnson and Tom. I got to do just about everything I wanted to do at NYRA. That's how fortunate I was. I really feel that way.”

In 2023, Imbriale transitioned from full time to seasonal duties as the primary announcer at Belmont Park and the Belmont at the Big A fall meet. Imbriale handed the Saratoga baton to Frank Mirahmadi, who called his first Saratoga meet in 2023 and will return in 2024.

Chris Griffin, who joined NYRA in 2023 and served as the track announcer for the winter and spring meets at Aqueduct, will expand his role and handle all race calling duties at Aqueduct.

“John's contributions went beyond an unwavering accuracy in calling the races,” said NYRA President & CEO Dave O'Rourke. “He conveyed excitement whether it was a Grade 1 at Saratoga or a mid-week claimer, and in doing so, helped fans learn about and better appreciate thoroughbred racing. John is also one of the true gentlemen of racing and a role model and mentor to a generation of NYRA staff.”

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Trailblazer Jessica Paquette Set to Debut as Parx Announcer

Jessica Paquette never imagined that she would become the full-time announcer at a major racetrack. Neither did anyone else. The job, for as long as the sport has been around, has been a profession that largely excluded women. But when the field loads into the gate at Parx Racing for Tuesday's first race, Paquette will be high atop the grandstand, nervous but excited, and ready to make history.

“The best thing we can all hope for in this sport is to leave the game a little bit better than it was when we found it,” she said. “I hope to set a good example and make the road easier for the generation coming behind us. If I can inspire one little girl who thinks this is possible for her and then comes and does it better than me then I'd be thrilled.”

Examples of females calling races are few and far between. Angela Hermann briefly held the job at Golden Gate Fields in 2016 after Michael Wrona left but was eventually replaced by Matt Dinerman. In the early sixties, Ann Elliott served as the announcer at Jefferson Downs in New Orleans for about four years. Nearly sixty years after Elliott's time at Jefferson, no other female had been hired as the full-time announcer at a U.S. track.

Paquette got into this by accident. In 2014, she was working in the marketing and publicity departments at Suffolk Down when regular announcer and TDN contributor T.D. Thornton couldn't get to the track because he was delayed by, of all things, a tornado. She was called upon to fill in. Thornton eventually made it to the track and Paquette went back to her other duties, which included serving as the track's simulcast host and paddock analyst.

She remained at Suffolk until 2019 when the track closed its doors for good. She felt lost.

“When Suffolk closed it was a huge existential crisis for me,” Paquette said. “Working in racing isn't just something I do, it is who I am. I didn't know what the future was going to look like.”

Paquette didn't mind traveling and would catch on as the simulcast analyst at Colonial Downs and Sam Houston. At Sam Houston last summer, management allowed her to call some of the Quarter-Horse races. She estimates that she has called 50 races total.

“When I called the Quarter Horses at Sam Houston this past summer I had such a good time,” she said. “By the third day I started to feel less like I was filling in and more like it was something I really wanted to do. I was open to trying to find an announcing position somewhere. When it turned out that Chris was moving on my name came up and I said 'Why not? Let's talk.'”

She had the backing of Griffin, who has also been hired as the announcer at Monmouth Park.

“She knows what this means and it means a lot to many people,” Griffin said. “I'm looking forward to her getting into the booth and excited for her to make her debut Tuesday. We have a tremendous team at Parx and she will fit right in. It's great to see. It's time for some new voices in this sport. She is a professional through and through and can handle this. I'm very excited that she is getting this chance and like everyone else I am looking forward to it.”

Paquette said Griffin is among a group of male announcers who have taken her under their wing and encouraged her to seek an announcing job.

“Some of my closest friends in the industry are announcers,” she said. “Jason Beem is one of my best friends. Chris Griffin and I have become very close. They both were really encouraging. Of course, coming up through Suffolk Downs we have Larry Collmus and T.D. Thornton and they set the bar high. Frank Mirahmadi has been extremely encouraging and offered such helpful criticism since I got my feet wet with the Quarter Horses.”

Having had relatively little experience as an announcer, Paquette said she has been preparing by practicing calling races over television.

“It's not the same when it's not real because you don't get that stomach-throbbing sense of brief terror as the gates are about to open,” she said. “That's something you can't recreate.”

Will that “sense of brief terror” go away on Tuesday?

“I hope it doesn't because it's all about the excitement and the adrenaline involved with being part of the sport we love,” she said. “My standard anxiety level is probably a 7 ½ on a scale of 1 to 10. So I'm going to be excited and nervous. But that's a good thing.”

She looks back to that final day at Suffolk Downs and says she watched the last race ever run at the East Boston track from the roof and was crying. Never did she imagine what was to come.

“I've been very fortunate that horses and horse racing have brought me to places I never thought possible in life,” Paquette said. “For me this at this point in my career, I've had lot of fun in the paddock, talking about handicapping and racing. But this, the announcing job, is an opportunity do something where I get to be the only one. It's a real honor.”

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Chris Griffin Named New Track Announcer at Monmouth Park

Parx track announcer Chris Griffin has been named the new track announcer at Monmouth Park starting with the 2023 meet that gets underway in May.

Griffin, the back-up announcer at Monmouth Park since 2020, will replace Frank Mirahmadi, who is taking over as the track announcer at Saratoga next summer after eight years at Monmouth Park. Mirahmadi is also the track announcer at Santa Anita.

The 41-year-old Griffin was also recently named the track announcer for the Aqueduct winter meet that runs from January through April.

“We're pleased to have Chris Griffin join us as our full-time announcer. There has been a tremendous legacy in the Monmouth Park announcer's booth for the past 50 years, from Bob Weems to Larry Collmus to Travis Stone to Frank Mirahmadi, and we feel Chris will carry on that tradition,” said Dennis Drazin, Chairman and CEO of Darby Development LLC, operators of Monmouth Park.

Griffin has been the track announcer at Parx since April of 2021, filling in at Monmouth Park in Mirahmadi's absence for the past three years as well. He also serves as the track announcer for the Monmouth-at-Meadowlands meet and will continue in that role going forward.

“It's an honor. I'm humbled,” said Griffin. “It's nice when you feel like you have worked really hard to achieve your goals of what you want to do career-wise and where you want to be.

“I have gotten to know some of the people at Monmouth Park over the past three years. To be able to fill in over that time, and to do so for Frank Mirahmadi, someone I respect immensely in this industry and as an announcer, has meant a lot to me. It's a great opportunity to be able to now get to do this full-time at Monmouth Park.”

Griffin, who hails from Santa Monica, Calif., got his announcing start with the National Hot Rod Association and Harlem Globetrotters, moving on to call races at the Humboldt County Fair in Ferndale, Calif. He has been the announcer for a variety of California fair meets as well as Portland Meadows, Los Alamitos and Gulfstream Park West.

Griffin was named the track announcer at Sam Houston in 2018. He also filled in at the Belmont Park fall meet in 2021.

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Week In Review: Another Milestone For Kentucky Downs

Another record was set Saturday at Kentucky Downs when $21,065,982 was wagered on the 12-race card. Perhaps even more impressively, Kentucky Downs out-handled Del Mar, where $19,423,928 was bet. Del Mar ran 11 races on Saturday.

That a wagering record was set was hardly a surprise considering that the card at Kentucky Downs was also the best ever offered at the sport's most unique racetrack. There were six graded stakes on the card and five of them were worth $1 million. The average field size was 11, the type of number horseplayers love.

Kentucky Downs is improving every year, but there is a way to make to make it even better. Largely because of the width of the turf course, fields are limited to 12 horses. In many races, there are 16 horses entered in a race, with four on the also-eligible list. For most tracks, limiting the number of starters to 12 wouldn't be an issue. But, according to Kentucky Downs Senior Vice President and General Manager Ted Nicholson, it's not uncommon for as many as 30 horses to enter a race, particularly in maiden races.

If Kentucky Downs does as well as it does limiting the fields to 12 horses, imagine how much more they could handle if allowing 16 horses to race. And why limit things to 16 horses? What's wrong with a 20-horse field, a 22-horse field?

Nicholson said track management is exploring its options relating to field size. It would take widening the course, particularly on the turns.

“Increasing the amount of horses that can run is something that we have talked about, but talks haven't gone that far,” he said. “We've been content with having 16 possibles and scratching down to 12. This is one of those things we probably should consider even more for next year.”

Nicholson added that the track decided to card more maiden races, which almost always have oversubscribed fields, this year. There were four on Saturday's card. It was done so that horsemen with maidens would have a better chance of getting into races rather than being shut out for the entire meet because it has been so difficult to get into those races.

“I'd much rather run a maiden race with 12 than throw up a claiming race that might scratch down to seven or eight,” Nicholson said.

Saratoga Is Growing But Is The Sport?

It was announced last week that the Saratoga meet set still another wagering record with $878,211,963 bet on the meet, a 7.7% increase over what was a record handle in 2021. If the trends continue, we may be only three or four years removed from the meet breaking the $1-billion mark, an astounding number.

But while this is good news for Saratoga and NYRA, the numbers suggest that the handle increases are not a matter of the pie growing but Saratoga taking a bigger slice of the pie. According to Equibase, through August, total handle is up just 0.24% on the year. In August, which includes the bulk of the Saratoga season, wagering was down 0.86%.

It's not just Saratoga. The numbers coming out of the top-tier tracks, particularly the boutique meets, continue to be good. That probably means that customers continue to turn away from the second and third-tier tracks and are focusing their wagering dollars on the very best simulcasting signals.

Problems for the Canadian Triple Crown

For the second year in a row, the winner of the Queen's Plate will not be running in the second leg of the Canadian Triple Crown. When entries were taken last week for Tuesday's Prince of Wales S. at Fort Erie, the field, as expected, did not include Queen's Plate winner Moira (Ghostzapper). She is being pointed for a Grade I race and trainer Kevin Attard said he is looking at either the GI E.P. Taylor S. at Woodbine or the GI Queen Elizabeth Challenge Cup S. at Keeneland. Attard wants to give her a chance in Grade I company to enhance her resume. You can hardly blame him.

The 2021 Plate winner Safe Conduct (Bodemeister) skipped the Prince of Wales because the connections thought me might have a hard time making the transition from Woodbine's Tapeta surface to the Fort Erie dirt track.

Also sitting out the $400,000 Prince of Wales will be Queen's Plate runner-up Hall of Dreams (Lemon Drop Kid) and Queen's Plate beaten favorite Rondure (Oxbow). The 7-5 morning-line favorite in the race is Sir for Sure (Sligo Bay {Ire}), who was third, beaten nine lengths, in the Queen's Plate.

With the race being run three weeks after the Queen's Plate and offering a purse that is modest by today's standards, the Prince of Wales has become a weak link in the Canadian Triple Crown, which also includes the Breeders' S. at Woodbine. As is this case with the U.S. Triple Crown, there is talk that the series needs to be tinkered with. One thought is to bring back a bonus structure for any horse sweeping the three races, something the Ontario tracks have done off and on over the years. Throwing some money at the problem is one possible solution.

As for the Queen's Plate, it appears that is about to undergo a name change with the death of Queen Elizabeth II. Since its inception way back in 1860, the race has been named for the reigning British monarch and has been called the Queen's Plate since 1952. As long as Woodbine sticks to tradition, the race will be renamed the King's Plate in honor of King Charles III.

New Voices in NYRA Announcer's Booth

It was announced last week that Frank Mirahmadi will take over as the announcer at Saratoga next year. It was one of a number of changes when it comes to the NYRA race-callers. John Imbriale has decided to cut back on his duties and will call the races at Belmont only. Chris Griffin, currently the announcer at Parx, will take over the duties at Aqueduct.

Mirahmadi will split his time between two of the top tracks in the sport, Saratoga and Santa Anita. Considering those assignments, his popularity and the quality of his calls, it's easy to argue that Mirahmadi deserves to be recognized as the very best in his profession.

Mirahmadi will be leaving Monmouth at the end of the current meet. If he's amenable to the idea, isn't bringing Larry Collmus back to Monmouth an obvious move?

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