Overview

In sports, not all the long shots who succeed are athletes. In 1984, Tom Hammond, a forty-year-old sportscaster who had primarily worked in Kentucky and the Southeast, got an unlikely opportunity to appear on the NBC Sports telecast of the inaugural Breeders' Cup. Assigned to report from the stall area on what was supposed to be a single broadcast, Hammond performed so well that an NBC executive offered him a chance to call NFL games on the spot. That broadcast launched Hammond's thirty-four-year career with NBC Sports and his rise to the top levels of American television sportscasting. Along with cowriter Mark Story, Hammond pulls back the curtain to reveal how a Kentucky native who started out reading horse racing results on Lexington radio went on to broadcast from thirteen Olympic Games. While covering Thoroughbred racing for NBC, Hammond broadcast sixteen Kentucky Derby and Preakness Stakes races and eleven runnings of the Belmont Stakes, including American Pharoah's historic 2015 Triple Crown victory. Hammond offers glimpses into his time as the play-by-play voice for Notre Dame football, calling NBA and NFL games, and his long-running stint announcing Southeastern Conference men's basketball for the league's syndicated TV package. Races, Games, and Olympic Dreams is an intimate and gripping look at Hammond's experiences.

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Tom Hammond is a retired American sports broadcaster. Mark Story, a sports reporter with the Lexington Herald-Leader for more than three decades, has been a sports columnist since 2001. He writes about college football and basketball and has covered every Kentucky Derby since 1994. Bob Costas was a broadcaster for NBC Sports television for four decades and now does play-by-play and commentary work for MLB, MLB Network, and CNN. A classically trained actor, director, and teacher with many regional Shakespeare plays to his credit, Danny Campbell has narrated over 150 titles and directed at least that many. He is a multiple AudioFile Earphones Award winner and was named one of AudioFile's Best of the Year 2017.

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