Journalists Whitaker, Veitch, Nagler honored by racing's Hall of Fame

Jack Whitaker, whose dogged reporting and graceful prose enhanced racing telecasts for generations of viewers, was announced on Wednesday as having been selected to the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame’s Joe Hirsch Media Roll of Honor, along with journalist Michael Veitch and the late columnist Barney Nagler.

Whitaker covered racing, most notably the Triple Crown, for CBS and then ABC and ESPN during a career that brought him numerous accolades, including the Eclipse Award for television achievement in 1977 and three Emmy Awards. He was inducted into the National Sportswriters and Sportscasters Hall of Fame in 2001 and in 2013 won the inaugural Jim McKay Award for career achievement in broadcasting from the National Turf Writers and Broadcasters Association.

Veitch, a native of Saratoga Springs, N.Y., and considered one of the nation’s foremost racing historians, is a longtime trustee of the Hall of Fame and is chairman of the Hall’s Historic Review Committee. He has covered racing since 1979 for The Saratogian, has written over the years for publications including Daily Racing Form and The Racing Times, has written two books on racing related to Saratoga, and has worked in local television through Capital OTB for years. He also was the editor of New York Thoroughbred magazine for more than a decade.

Nagler, who died in 1990, wrote for The Morning Telegraph beginning in 1950 and then in 1972 migrated to its sister publication, DRF, where he continued to write his “On Second Thought” column. He won the Walter Haight Award for career achievement as a racing writer from the then-named National Turf Writers Association in 1978. He wrote several books, including one on Bill Shoemaker, and worked for both NBC and ABC as a sports producer.

The Joe Hirsch Media Roll of Honor is named for the late, great columnist for DRF. It was established in 2010, the year after his death.