Ercel Ellis Jr., a jack-of-all-trades in the racing industry who hosted a racing radio broadcast for five decades, died on May 7 in Lexington at a veterans’ affair facility, according to his family. Ellis was 94. A Central Kentucky native whose father managed Dixiana Farm during his youth, Ellis hosted the race results show “Post Time” from 1959 to 2010 and developed a separate radio program, “Horse Tales,” chronicling the industry’s horses and personalities, that ran until early 2026. The programs were highly popular in Central Kentucky. Ellis’s wide experience and love for racing led Kim Lady Smith to recruit him for the Kentucky Horse Industry Oral Industry Project, where Ellis held forth on his early experiences on Dixiana and his passion for the sport during lengthy interviews. Among those early milestones was his connection to Man o’ War, the Hall of Fame horse who was foaled at Dixiana. Ellis said during his interviews with the Oral Industry Project that his father told him that he was the first to put a halter on the horse as a foal. The younger Ellis first met Man o’ War when he was 6 and the horse was 20. “My dad said, ‘Take a good look at this horse, boy, because you will never see another one like him,’ and he was right,” Ellis said. :: Access the most trusted data and information in horse racing! DRF Past Performances and Picks are available now. Ellis was eventually one of the 2,500 mourners who attended the horse’s funeral at Faraway Farm in 1947. “First funeral I ever went to,” Ellis said. “It’s one of the reasons it’s hard to talk about.” Ellis was born on May 30, 1931, and he spent his youth working with the Dixiana horses. He was drafted during the Korean War and was sent to the U.S. Navy’s radar school after basic training in San Francisco, where he would frequently attend Golden Gate Fields. Following his discharge, he went to work at the racetrack for Dixiana’s trainer, Jack Hodgins, but he soon left that job and got work in the advertising department at The Blood-Horse. During his early years at the magazine, he filled in frequently for host Art Baumohl on his radio program. He took over after Baumohl retired in 1959. During that time, Ellis Jr. ran the Daily Racing Form’s Kentucky bureau from 1968-83. He wrote a weekly column about the Central Kentucky breeding industry while at the Form and sold ads to local farms. Ellis and his wife Jackie, who he married in 1982, also bought a 22-acre farm in Bourbon County, where they bred and raised Thoroughbreds. He eventually took out his own trainer’s license. Ellis was pre-deceased by his first wife, Joan, who died in 1941, and two children. His family requested that donations be made to Old Friends in lieu of flowers. :: Want to learn more about handicapping and wagering? Check out DRF's Handicapping 101 and Wagering 101 pages.