Ken Squier

Announcer, Track Owner, Promoter
CLASS OF 2002

The voice of Ken Squier has been easily recognized, for the last 50 years, by a few thousand fans at the high banks of Vermont’s Thunder Road International Speedbowl, or a few million listening to the “Great American Race” from the high banks of the Daytona Speedway. Squier started out as an announcer at Mallets Bay and the Northeastern Speedway in the 1950s, before opening Thunder Road in Barre, VT in 1960.

He also created Thunder Road’s marquee event, the Vermont Milk Bowl. The unique 3-segment format race has closed out every Thunder Road Speedbowl season since 1962.

Longtime NASCAR North competitor Stub Fadden put it best. “In 1960, we had been helping a guy named Leland Ingerson. Well, opening day at Thunder Road, my wife Charlotte and I listened to the race on WDEV (Squier’s radio station in Waterbury, VT). Ken made the race sound exciting and I had to get involved. I wouldn’t even want to estimate the number of people that Ken Squier has introduced to auto racing myself included”.

Ken is one of the founders of World Sports Enterprises and the Motor Racing Network, which he co-founded with Bill France in 1970. He later moved to television, calling the first live broadcast of the Daytona 500 in 1979. He is credited with coining the phrase “The Great American Race” for NASCAR’s biggest event. He called every Daytona 500 for CBS from 1979 to 1997. He also covered NASCAR races for TBS.

Fellow television personality Dick Berggren admires Squier. “When you look at today’s television reporters, myself, Mike Joy, Jack Arute“, says Berggren, “Ken has been a role model for each and every one of us. He’s my hero”.

Squier has been with CBS Sports for over 25 years. It was there that he announced the first live flag to flag coverage of the Daytona 500 in 1979. He has received Emmy nominations for Outstanding Edited Sport Series and Outstanding National Sports Broadcaster. Since his NEAR Hall of Fame induction, he has also been inducted into the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America (2010) and the NASCAR Hall of Fame (2018).

His broadcasting talents have taken him beyond motorsports during his long career, covering ice skating, golf, tennis and the 1992 & 1994 Winter Olympics.

Ken Squier was the first recipient of the Ron Bouchard Memorial Award for lifetime achievement in New England auto racing in 2016. Ken passed away on November 15, 2023.