Pioneering horse racing tv commentator Charlsie Cantey shall be honored with the Jane Goldstein Exemplary Management Award on the second annual Horse Racing Ladies’s Summit, Sept. 27-29 at Santa Anita Park.
A local of North Carolina, Cantey began her profession with race horses in New York after graduating from George Washington College in 1968. She labored with trainers Elliott Burch, Frank Whiteley Jr., David Whiteley, and Sidney Watters, in addition to Joe Cantey after their 1969 marriage.
She was persuaded by Frank Wright and Dave Johnson, co-hosts of the WOR-TV (New York) weekly racing present, to hitch them in 1975. Two years later she made her community debut on CBS for the Travers Stakes (G1) alongside Wright and Jack Whitaker. Throughout 9 years with CBS she originated interviews from horseback.
When ABC was contracted for Triple Crown protection in 1986, Cantey was a part of the expertise group that included Jim McKay, Al Michaels, Whitaker, and Johnson. In 2001 the contract went to NBC, the place she labored with Tom Hammond and others for the Triple Crown, in addition to the Breeders’ Cup World Championships.
Cantey introduced distinctive perception about horses to the telecasts, and regardless of ongoing nervousness about her stay appearances she supplied poise and professionalism that introduced her quick acceptance.
“I by no means considered myself as a pioneer,” Cantey informed Jay Hovdey in a 2020 BloodHorse interview. “I by no means stopped to suppose that I used to be a lady making an attempt to work in a person’s world, as a result of I got here out of the backstretch. The folks I used to be interviewing within the afternoon had been folks I labored alongside within the morning. And I’ve to say I by no means confronted any discrimination.”
Cantey’s honors embody being a part of some two dozen Eclipse Award-winning telecasts, choice to the Nationwide Museum of Racing’s Joe Hirsch Media Roll of Honor, the Jim McKay Award for broadcasting excellence by Nationwide Turf Writers and Broadcasters, and Pimlico’s Outdated Hilltop Award on the Preakness Alibi Breakfast.
“I’m honored, and past humbled, to obtain the Jane Goldstein Management Award,” Cantey stated. “To be acknowledged by Jane and the Horse Racing Ladies’s Summit is a shocking shock, and I’m so grateful to be remembered by this necessary collective drive dedicated to advancing all sides of our mutual lifelong ardour, Thoroughbred racing.”
She retired in 2005 and enjoys time with three grandsons.
The award is known as for ground-breaking turf publicist Jane Goldstein, who was acknowledged for the inaugural presentation final yr.
