Tom Hammond, Joe Burnham selected for National Museum of Racing’s Media Roll of Honor

Tom Hammond, the veteran television host, and the late Joe Burnham, a cinematographer, have been selected for induction into the National Museum of Racing’s Media Roll of Honor, according to the museum.

Hammond, a two-time Eclipse Award winner who anchored NBC’s racing broadcasts for more than 30 years, and Burnham, who had a five-decade career filming racing and its stars, will join the ranks of 20 other individuals inducted into the Media Roll of Honor since it was established in 2010.

Hammond is one of the most recognizable racing personalities of the sport’s modern era, having parlayed a lifelong fascination with racing into a broadcasting career that spanned four decades. Although Hammond started with NBC as a college basketball announcer in the last 1970s, he was assigned a reporting role for the network’s coverage of the inaugural Breeders’ Cup broadcast in 1984, and he quickly established himself as television’s leading racing host.

In addition to his racing duties, Hammond was also a leading figure in the network’s coverage of both the Winter and Summer Olympics, and he was the lead play-by-play voice for NBC’s coverage of Notre Dame football. A native of Lexington, Ky., he has been honored with four Emmy Awards, the Joe Palmer Award, and was inducted into the Kentucky Athletic Hall of Fame in 2001.

Burnham, who died in 1994, was an esteemed cinematographer who was also “instrumental in organizing and archiving decades of historical racing footage,” according to the Hall of Fame. He was the producer of the Eclipse Awards program for 17 years, and he was selected for an Eclipse Award in 1972 for film achievement and the Joe Palmer Award in 1991.

Based in California, Burnham filmed daily racing coverage and produced racing documentaries, one of which was nominated for an Academy Award for photography. He also produced a popular CBS racing show and a radio program following racing results in Southern California.