John Imbriale Coming Back

[randallscott35]

Ready to announce some races on the inner again. Nice guy....He would've done a better job than Denman did on BC day. Maybe.

http://news.bloodhorse.com/viewstory.asp?id=36450

[disappearingdan_akaplaya]

steve cross i believe his name is, the guy whos calling the races@hoosier currently, isnt bad at all

[saucon17]

Nice to see he's coming back to call th Big A. Always clear and precise
voice and easy to listen too.

[SCUDSBROTHER]

For some reason,I always liked to hear this guy call a race.Atleast you know it's New York Racing. I have never understood why Colmus is popular.Very dull (to me.) Obviously,dull works pretty well (for some.)

[randallscott35]

Originally Posted by SCUDSBROTHER

For some reason,I always liked to hear this guy call a race.Atleast you know it's New York Racing. I have never understood why Colmus is popular.Very dull (to me.) Obviously,dull works pretty well (for some.)

You are so right. Kind of like talking to a therapist of something. He has that voice where you know everything will be ok....Unless you wheeled the chalk in which case you deserve to feel lousy.

[KirisClown]

Excellent news... it'll be nice having him back for a while.

You know Imbriale was being groomed to be the next announcer after Marshall Cassidy retired at NYRA. This was in the mid to late 80's. He had a very enthusiastic voice and call and we used to love it when he called the races.
It got derailed a tad when he committed a big blunder on Father's Day of 1987. It was a Sunday and Imbriale was calling the races in place of Cassidy. I will never forget it, he gave some rocking calls, including a real nice allowance race where John's Treasure won the race. But the feature that day(I believe it was the True North) contained Groovy and King's Swan, and Imbriale mistook or miscalled the race in the lane and called Groovy King's Swan. It was a bad blunder because Groovy smashed a long standing track record and went in 1:07:4. It was SOME effort. I was at a simulcast place full of people and it was something I will never forget. The race was over and then the time flashed up and spontaneously everyone in the place stood up and clapped and gave a standing ovation to what they had witnessed. I have never seen that before that day or since and it sayed with me because it was great to see horseplayers respect what they had seen. It was also the first time I ever made a single wager of 100 dollars or more on a bet, I played a 105 dollar Daily Double on Groovy with a claimer in teh last race named Truth Be Told trained by Pistol Pete Ferriola and ridden by David Nuesch who was adding blinkers, he won by about 13 lengths right after Groovy broke the track record in the previous race.
The problem was that the Groovy race was shown again and again throughout the year in highlight clips on in house feed, race of the week shows, and BC preview shows and they always showed it with no sound because of Imbriale's blunder.
His backup role became diminished after that for a while and then they went out and got Durkin not too many years later.
Eventually he was worked back into the backup caller role to Durkin and I always felt like had he not made that blunder that he would have been full time caller after Cassidy retired.