Veteran sports broadcaster Verne Lundquist is calling NCAA Tournament basketball games for CBS this weekend. I don’t know about you, but even fourteen years after CBS broadcast its last Winter Olympics, Lundquist’s voice will still always be associated with Olympic coverage for me.
If you grew up in the late 1980s and early 1990s, there was high probability that one of your childhood dreams was to be a well-trained, calm and composed figure skater representing the United States at the Olympics. Part of that dream included Lundquist narrating your life story – or at least pertinent biographical information – to the masses. And then when Scott Hamilton, his color analyst, would flip out and talk nonsensical about your performance, Lundquist would bring him back from spaz-ville.
“She landed a triple loop,” Hamilton would comment, then start shrieking like someone turned his personal energy throttle up to Micro Machine Man. “OH MY GOODNESS, THIS IS THE BEST MOMENT IN THE HISTORY OF AMERICA. NO MANKIND. NO, ALL OF THE UNIVERSE.”
Lundquist would cut through the energy and translate Hamilton’s insanity to the masses. “I think what you’re trying to say, Scott, is that she’s doing quite well.”
Childhood Olympics junkies, like myself, would take to the nearest tiled floor in my house during Olympic coverage commercials and “skate” around in our footy pajamas. When I did so, I always could hear Lundquist’s voice right before I manically started jumping around in my tiny kitchen. “The first to skate, the ten year old from Rochester, New York, Katie Hasenauer.”
You wanted Lundquist to tell America your own personal story of adversity, you wanted Hamilton to over-caffeinatedly swoon over your jumps and artistry, and you wanted to skate like Olympic gold medalist Kristi Yamaguchi. That was life as a ten year old girl in 1992, back when the Olympics were the national equivalent of the Super Bowl, March Madness, a Mad Men season premiere and a Harry Potter film opening all in one. (Or at least, that is what it felt like.)
When I had Syracuse-Wisconsin and Ohio State-Cincinnati basketball on my television Thursday night and heard the now 71 year old Lundquist calling the game, I was instantly taken back to those days where I spent my entire February school vacation glued to the television watching Olympics coverage and hanging on to his every word. For me, there are few childhood memories clearer or fonder than that.
Here’s Lundquist calling one of 1992 Olympic gold medalist Kristi Yamaguchi’s programs.
