Odds On Racing - Harness Racing

Odds On Racing's

Personality of the Month
for July 2007

Roger Huston

Known throughout harness racing circles as simply “The Voice,” announcer Roger Huston, 64, is best known for his dynamic and flamboyant race calls.

Mainly based at The Meadows in Pennsylvania, Huston has also plied his wares at numerous county fair tracks throughout the North America, including the most famous county fair track of all—Delaware, Ohio—home of the Little Brown Jug.

A native of Xenia, Ohio, Huston began his announcing career fresh out of High School in May of 1960—and it was that season that something happened to Huston that would forever stick with him, when he called the races at the Champaign County Fair in Urbana, Ohio.

Roger Huston

“I met a gentleman after the races who told that he had attended the races for many years at Urbana, but that the races he saw that day in Urbana were the first he had ever seen. My announcing had painted a vivid picture of sound that a blind person could truly appreciate, which he did,” Huston recalled. “Many people tried to change my style over the years, but this man’s comment assured me that I was doing what was best for me.”

Huston called races mainly in the Buckeye State—then traveled to Pompano Park in South Florida and to Lexington’s Red Mile—before eventually settling in Western Pennsylvania for his full-time gig as The Meadows announcer in 1976, where he’s been ever since.

Huston is perhaps best known now for his infamous race call during the 1985 Little Brown Jug, when he encouraged the some 60,000 people in attendance “if you’ve never stood up before, you’d better stand up now!”

“I hadn’t planned on saying that, the words just came out,” Roger quipped in an interview that year. “Of the over 135,000 races I’ve called, that’s the one people remember the most.”

Roger was inducted into harness racing’s national Hall of Fame—Communications Corner in 2000, and into Ohio Harness Racing Hall of Fame in 2001