Thursday Thoughts with Jason Beem for Nov. 20, 2025

A good Thursday morning to you all! Sitting here in the tired bliss that comes after a long opening day at Tampa Bay Downs yesterday. More on that in a bit, but I also just wanted to write about opening days in general. I actually thought about my first opening day, which was almost 20 years ago at River Downs. As I get older, I feel like specific memories from back then can start to fade a bit, but my recollections of that opening day are still very fresh. 

I’ll be the first to admit I got very lucky getting a job at a track like River right away. I had started practicing announcing about a year prior, and it was only four months prior that I had gotten to call my first race over a P.A. system at Portland Meadows. A series of fortunate events and a nice recommendation from Greg “Boomer” Wry was enough to get me the gig at River. It was a wet April day in Cincinnati, and I was pacing in the booth before the horses came out. I knew the names of the horses forwards and back as I’d been staring at that first program page for the previous three days. Then I heard a knock at the door with just three minutes left to post time. It was Jeff Reidel, who was one of our placing judges. 

Jeff had this great smile and really always seemed to have a blast while working at the races. I got to know him for the week before opening day as we both worked in the race office. Well, when he popped his head in before that first race, he just grinned and said, “Are you nervous?” I nodded affirmatively, and he quickly looked at me, more serious now, and said, “Don’t worry, nobody is listening.” Then he smiled, shut the door, and was gone. It made me laugh, and honestly, it really helped to calm my nerves down that first race. Ever since then, when I’m nervous before a race, I’ll often think or say out loud, “Don’t worry, nobody is listening.” 

On that first opening day, I remember being so exhausted by the end of it. Memorizing names all day makes your brain tired, even if your body does almost no physical work. Announcing leads to a weird kind of tiredness because your brain is just toast, and your body has had adrenaline spikes all day long and then moments of rest between races. It’s a weird job!

Opening days are also almost always rife with little things that go wrong. Whether it’s technology not working as you thought, people being rusty or missing things, it just never goes fully smooth. There are often audio issues because no matter how many times you sound-check, when you add 4,000 people to the grandstand and apron, it just gets so much louder that you inevitably end up doing sound checks during the races. 

But usually things start to smooth out, and you get into your rhythm. For me, the toughest part of adjusting back to Tampa is how low the booth is compared to one at Colonial Downs, where I work in the summer. Just a little tougher to gauge the horse’s leads and have depth perception in the stretch than it is at Colonial. But give me a few days, and I’ll be back to normal on all that stuff.  

It’s an exciting time of year, and opening day has me very jazzed for what should be a very fun 100th anniversary season here at Tampa Bay Downs. Also, the handle was strong on opening day, which is always a good sign!  

Have a great weekend, everyone!