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Canadian announcer rules the public address roost at 2012 Olympics
As of the posting of this blog, Canada has yet to make it to the highest portion of the Olympic podium and claim top prize in any event at the 2012 London Games.
Still, there is a Canadian who is gold standard, at least as far as the world of track and field goes. He doesn't throw a hammer, jump a hurdle or breast the tape. But, he has a hand - or voice, rather - in all of the track and field events as the public address announcer at Olympic Stadium.
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Garry Hill was a bit of a controversial choice to man the mic for the glorious events of the second week of the games. That's because most of the English speaking announcers in London are British, yet a native was not chosen to handle the microphone for the 47 different events that make up the athletics announcing workload.
The Daily Mail complained that there were plenty of British announcers who could handle the job, and maybe one of them should have been given the plum assignment.
The International Association of Athletics Federations, responsible for the hiring, felt the firestorm was enough to warrant a press release defending Hill as their choice for Olympic athletics announcing, according to the Globe And Mail's Paul Waldie, who further defended the choice of Hill:
So many others could do the job? Well, consider that Hill has been covering track and field for more than 40 years and he co-owns the sport's most influential publication, Track and Field News. Furthermore, he has been handling stadium announcing duties at major track championships for 16 years in 17 countries and London will be his fourth Olympics.
While the Daily Mail voiced its displeasure over the hiring of a Canadian to provide in- stadium announcing, the British-based Sports Journalists' Association was moved to take a swipe at an unnamed writer for his/her condemnation of Hill's hiring - as well as that writer's butchering of Hill's name:
One "award-winning" sports diarist has hardly covered himself in glory, with a feeble story about one of the two stadium announcers for the Olympic athletics events being, horror of horrors… a Canadian.
The sports diary column managed to get not just one element of the announcer's name wrong, but misspelled both his first and surname. It is, in fact, Garry Hill, and not "Gary Hall" (perhaps the diarist was confused with the name of two generations of American Olympic swimmers?).
In a report of a "controversial" "row" between LOCOG and the world athletics body, the IAAF, over the choice of announcer, the diary overlooked the fact that international governing bodies often determine the event staffing in senior positions, such as referees and judges, as well as announcers.
What the diary failed to report is that Garry Hill/Gary Hall has been the "voice" of international athletics championships for three decades, providing the stadium announcements at most world championships and at the Olympics since 1992.
Outside of Hill's extensive and impressive resume in athletics announcing, an advantage he may carry is just that of being born Canadian. The Trail, B.C. native, who moved to San Jose, California in 1970, has never take out U.S. citizenship.
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Long have I heard, throughout the broadcast industry, that Canadian announcers carry a kind of clean, lack-of-accent kind of delivery, that makes them especially valuable in the United States. As long as they don't lean too hard on the "eh" thing and are careful not to succumb to the dreaded "aboot" instead of "about" syndrome, Canadians can happily enjoy great success at the national level, in the U.S., and have for years. Dan Shulman, a Toronto native, won the "sportscaster of the year" award in the States earlier this year, beating the likes of Bob Costas, Mike Tirico, Al Michaels, Dan Patrick and Joe Buck.
He's just the latest in a long line of Canucks that have enjoyed success abroad.
Hill's voice is in that choir, too, even if his clean, clear Canadian delivery carries an accent that is as noticeable to a Brit as their accent would be to a Canadian audience.
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Hill's really distinct advantage, apparently, is that he just flat out knows his stuff. And knows what it takes to ensure a booming, impressive voice presence is at hand in an 80 thousand seat stadium. Again, from The Globe:
"When people ask me what's the clue to being a good announcer, I say enunciation, enunciation, enunciation. It doesn't matter what language you are speaking, if you are speaking in a garbled fashion."
Hill isn't the first Canadian to hold the illustrious job at an Olympics. Dan Goodwin filled the same role at the 1996 Games in Atlanta.
Bit of pip, what? I mean "eh" what?
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• Photos: Prnice Harry drops by Canada Olympic House
• Canada women's basketball into quarter-finals in London
