Jim McKay, Olympics and ABC announcer, dies at age 86

NEW YORK -- Jim McKay, the venerable and eloquent sportscaster thrust into the role of telling Americans about the tragedy at the 1972 Munich Olympics, has died. He was 86.

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McKay -- understated, dignified and with a clear eye for detail -- covered 12 Olympics, but none more memorably than the Summer Games in Munich, Germany. He was the anchor when events turned grim with the news that Palestinian terrorists had kidnapped 11 Israeli athletes.

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veteran of the U.S. Navy in World War II, McKay was the first on-air television broadcaster seen in Baltimore. He worked at CBS Sports briefly, but did his most memorable work at ABC Sports when it dominated the business under leader Roone Arledge.

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McKay's first television broadcast assignment was a horse race at Pimlico in 1947. It was the start of a love affair -- horse racing captivated him like nothing else.

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I had no idea he had been around so long.
He had an amazing career.
I remember him doing wide world of sports when I was a kid in the early 70's.

link:
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/news/story?id=3430672

Those of us who saw his coverage in Munich in '72 will forever remember not just how well he covered this story but with the class he handled a very difficult situation.

Around '92 I participated in an interview with Mr. McKay (actually McMannus...but in those days you didn't want to be too ethnic) and got to hear this man's fascinating story...working his way up through radio and early television and how he was creating as he was going along. He joked that when a network had a "project doomed to failure", he got the call...refering primarily to his years of hosting Wide World of Sports and how he made some of the most foreign sports interesting. Also he came from a time where you worked 7 days a week and didn't care about ratings or money, it was creating or capturing the moment that was his goal.

Rest well, Mr. McKay...another great personality has left us.

back in the late 1950s. Not sure if this was his first TV "gig" but I sure enjoyed him. He pretty much "made" Wide World of Sports, IMHO. Good guy, really left his mark.

Tired Old Cynic

WWoS changed everything. It was can't miss TV for the sports crowd....from barrel jumping to log rolling, it had it all. RIP

And no, it's not a Rickroll.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKEDD1i4oGk

This is a story, narrated by Jim McKay, about Vinko Bogataj. Mr. Bogataj was the poor bastard whose nose dive off the end of the ski jump opened every broadcast (well, every broadcast after the incident) of the Wide World of Sports. "The thrill of victory" (big victory celebration, and it changed every week) "and the agony of defeat" (Bogataj' crash).

Jim McKay was a classy guy.

What else is there to say?

:toast::patriot::toast: