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The voice of greyhound racing in NSW Paul Ambrosoli is set to hang up the microphone following this Saturday’s Wentworth Park meeting.
‘PA’, as he is affectionately known, has been calling greyhound racing for as long as most people can remember, with his voice so iconic it’ll be a great loss for the industry.
For those who are old enough to tell you Paul Ambrosoli was actually the first radio broadcaster for the Penrith Panthers when they were admitted into the top division of rugby league in NSW.
At the time Ambrosoli was working for a bookmaker in Lithgow and he suggested to the 2KA Katoomba Station manager John Conry that since he was a Penrith local, that he should broadcast the games.
The rest they say as history as he was asked to broadcast racing when Frank Kennedy left the station. Later he moved to 2KY when they started broadcasting racing coverage in 1971, and to this day Ambrosoli is still there.
What is incredible about Ambrosoli is his great passion for racing and after all his time broadcasting racing it has never dulled. It doesn’t matter the quality of the race either whether it be a maiden or a final the call will always be a consistent and exciting one.
While greyhound racing is Paul’s passion he has also been the course commentator at Hawkesbury for 25 years. Along with his list of achievements he has called every Canberra Greyhound Cup meeting since its inception, where I have been fortunate to have met Ambrosoli and I can vouch that he is one of the nicest people you could ever meet.
He has also called consistently at the Coonamble Carnival for a number of years where there is 70 races run in just three days.
Through his long career Ambrosoli has been lucky to avoid some unlucky mishaps some of his colleagues have unfortunately endured. But he wasn’t able to escape a bout of hiccups when calling a final race at Dapto.
But true to his qualities Ambrosoli called the 720 metre event like every other race before it. Doug Melton the studio announcer described it as one of the funniest occurrences he has seen.
“Now there are some things that are funny”, remarked the studio announcer, Doug Melton, “but a racecaller with the hiccups takes the cake!”
There was also a brief point and time when 2KY sold its rights and became an Italian only speaking radio station apart from the racing broadcast. Ambrosoli hadn’t been told about the change and thought he had tuned into the wrong station.
Ambrosoli’s favourite place to call a race was the old broadcast box on the straight at Wentworth Park. He liked it for its picturesque quality.
After working so hard for so long (sometimes 20 hours a day when he was younger) it’s time for Paul to take a break. His contribution to broadcast will never be forgotten and it will be so hard to listen to a Wentworth Park race call without Paul’s voice on the other end.
It’ll be something that will take quite some years to replace, but it’s unlikely we will never see another race caller quite like Paul Ambrosoli.
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