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[v j stauffer]

Originally Posted by dilanesp

As I recall, Buchdahl was the announcer at Oak Tree and started very, very young in the mid-1970's. He also backed up Harry Henson at Hollywood Park. At the time, SA and Hollywood very much saw themselves as competitors, and around Fall 1982, Hollywood Park fired Henson and offered the job to Buchdahl, who then worked the 1982 Oak Tree season while Oak Tree looked for a new announcer. They found what they were looking for in a young announcer from South Africa named Trevor Denman, who came in to work the 1983 Oak Tree meeting and the rest was history.

But Marje Everett (the owner of Hollywood Park at the time), I guess, decided she didn't like Buchdahl so well and replaced him with Jim Byers. After that, Buchdahl has worked on and off as a racecaller but never on as big a stage as he had at Oak Tree and Hollywood Park (he called several of John Henry's races, for instance, and Landaluce's last two starts).

FWIW, I remember Santa Anita featured Buchdahl on the interview program it used to run on KDOC-56 locally sometime in the late 1980's, and he said he actually found day-to-day race calling something of a grind, though he missed calling the really big races. So maybe that has something to do with him not having a long-term gig as a racecaller- you really have to love the day to day grind.

HOLLYWOOD PARK DID NOT FIRE HARRY HENSON