Peter Bromley

Peter Bromley (30 April 1929 – 3 June 2003) was BBC Radio's voice of horse racing for 40 years, and one of the most famous and recognised sports broadcasters in the United Kingdom.

Born at Heswall on the Wirral (then in Cheshire) Bromley was educated at Cheltenham College and Sandhurst. He served as a lieutenant in the 14th/20th King's Hussars, where he won the Bisley Cup for rifle shooting and came close to qualifying for Britain's modern pentathlon team for the 1952 Summer Olympics. He subsequently became the assistant to the British racehorse trainer Frank Pullen, and rode occasionally as an amateur jockey until he fractured his skull when a horse he was riding collided with a lorry.

In 1955 he became one of the first racecourse commentators in Britain (his first commentary was at Plumpton on 23 March that year - delivering the immortal line ' Atom Bomb has fallen!', after earlier test commentaries at the now-defunct Hurst Park and at Sandown Park), and in four years he commentated at every course apart from Cartmel. He had also begun to commentate on television, initially (briefly) for ITV, but from 1958 for the BBC. On 13 May 1959, at Newmarket, he gave his first radio commentary. From 1 December 1959, he became the BBC's first racing correspondent, the first time the Corporation had appointed a specialist correspondent on any sport. This was a full-time job: no commercial involvements or advertisements were permitted, and even opening fetes was frowned upon. He would remain in this position until the summer of 2001, calling home the winners of 202 Classics, with the exception of the 1969 St Leger when he was on holiday - BBC colleague Julian Wilson covered for him - and the 1997 St Leger when Lee McKenzie stood in for him when he hurt his knee and could not climb up the stairs to the commentary box in Doncaster.

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