Behind the scenes with Luke van Belkom, departing standardbred simulcast producer
by Melissa Keith
Anyone who has watched the Woodbine Mohawk Park simulcast over the past 15 years is familiar with the behind-the-scenes impact of Luke van Belkom. Saturday (Aug. 30), he announced his departure from Woodbine Entertainment, effective after that night’s stakes-filled card. He looked back fondly on his time with the company, answering some questions for HRU two days later.
Van Belkom said he started out in racing simulcast production when he got a tip about a job at an Ontario quarter horse track.
“In 2011, I graduated from Seneca College for television broadcasting,” van Belkom said. “I was doing a variety of shoots when a fellow graduate reached out to me about operating a tower camera at Ajax Downs. After a month, the technical director position opened up and I was able to step into that role. Eager for the opportunity — and the proximity to the charter and stewards — I began finding out all I could about racing, and realized it was my niche.”
Hoping to build on promising first steps, van Belkom said he looked into where he could take his skills to the next level in the racing industry.
“Woodbine is gospel in terms of Canadian racing; I knew that was where I wanted to be,” he said. “When the season at Ajax concluded, I took a drive to Woodbine [Racetrack, in Rexdale, ON] and submitted an application with my resume for the broadcast department. A week later, I interviewed for the camera operator position.”
He said the work was a natural extension of his early interests.
“From a young age, I knew I wanted to work in film and television,” van Belkom said. “I loved to tell stories with the family camcorder and swiftly moved toward editing software to hone my skills. Seneca [College] is where I formed a lot of my future goals relating to television and film. At Seneca I strayed away from the editing side of things, but as I developed in my career, I realized my affinity for creating a cohesive product out of the pieces you receive from your team.”
Van Belkom’s first job with Woodbine was as a tower camera operator, “shooting the ‘head-on’ shots used by the stewards and judges.” He added that it was “technically [with] ONTrack Media,” a Toronto, ON-based provider of video production, regulatory, and related services for racetracks. Now, he was leaving Woodbine Mohawk Park on a high note.
“My final role was standardbred simulcast producer, responsible for assembling content, leading, and executing nightly racing broadcasts,” he said.
First, there was a learning curve for the non-equestrian with a burgeoning interest in racehorses of all breeds.
“I knew very little of racing before starting with Woodbine,” van Belkom told HRU. “I knew of some of the major stakes races — the Queen’s [King’s] Plate, the American Triple Crown — but it was a fairly limited view. My first day at Ajax threw me off with the quarter horse racing. I remember finishing my first race and thinking ‘Wait, was that it?’ All of the knowledge I gained of racing came from working in it and experiencing a growth in my passion for the sport.”
He called “this year’s Pepsi North America Cup broadcast” the pinnacle of his time at the Campbellville, ON track.
“The crew and I had come off the previous week with the double-header race day [Saturday (June 7)] and the [North America Cup] post-position draw with a lot of issues ironed out and were ready to kick butt,” van Belkom said. “We had what I felt was a solid pre-show with wonderful flow provided by [simulcast hosts] Elissa Blowe and Randy Waples. John Rallis also ‘came in clutch’ with fantastic and insightful pre- and post-race interviews. All of this, with the team behind the scenes firing on all cylinders with minimal errors.”
Van Belkom added that he took particular pride in bringing a now-popular style of racing coverage to the Mohawk simulcast audience.
“My favorite segment I have produced will always be the ‘Mic’d Up’ videos,” he said. “We were just starting back racing, off of the first major COVID shutdown, and I really wanted to do something on the broadcast to have our product stand out. [Woodbine vice president of standardbred racing] Bill McLinchey had shown me an older video from Yonkers Raceway of Hervé Filion talking through his drives [on July 6, 1988], and I felt something like that had not been done in a while and technology has only improved since then. Seeing drivers embrace the opportunity to show the public what happens from their perspective in a race [at Woodbine Mohawk Park] was awesome to experience. I was overwhelmed with how much the segment and clips took off, and to see how many other racetracks imitated the format.”
Van Belkom said that during his time at Woodbine Entertainment, he had also won media awards for his work with a well-known independent racing media producer.
“My Sam McKee Award and [Standardbred Canada Media Excellence] awards on my shelf were thanks to my collaboration with Curtis MacDonald and his company CUJO Entertainment,” van Belkom said. “Curtis asked me to direct and fill in on roles for the CBS Hambletonian broadcast since 2022 and it has been incredible that we won both awards over the years.”
The CUJO Entertainment team received an honorable mention for the 2024 McKee Award last year and won top honors in 2022. They received Standardbred Canada’s 2024 Media Excellence Award for Outstanding Video, Film or Broadcast.
“I’m proud of both for different reasons,” van Belkom said. “The McKee Award was for my first network television directing experience and unfortunately Dave Brower’s last Hambletonian. It was an incredible honor to have had the opportunity to work with Dave and have a brief moment to pick his brain about his decades of experience in racing. The O’Brien Award was for last year’s Hambletonian on CBS, where I felt Curtis and I had things more locked down than in previous years, and I also had the opportunity to edit and produce the feature content on the show, which I thought turned out very well.”
Over his career, van Belkom said he experienced technological change on a first-hand basis.
“When I started working at Woodbine in 2012, the entire broadcast was still in Standard Definition, using a lot of secondhand equipment from CBC [Canadian Broadcast Corporation],” he told HRU. “While at the time it was still miles ahead of [other] simulcasts of the day, looking back on where we were then and where we are now, it’s incredible. Shifting to HD [High Definition video] in 2016, you were able to see so many more details on track with horses’ body language, equipment, track condition, etcetera.”
Mohawk’s outgoing simulcast producer said that he witnessed another wave of innovation within the past decade.
“I think the biggest shift we started to see in the late 2010s was when a lot of consumer electronics were reaching a level where, say, for instance, a cell phone video can now be slightly indistinguishable from a professional video camera in a run and gun set-up,” he said. (“Run and gun” refers to a style of getting many shots quickly with a small, fast-moving video team.)
“COVID made audiences more accepting of the use of consumer gear in broadcast with video calls, and I really loved how we were able to conduct impact feature interviews from someone’s living room on an iPad. I will say though, as equipment continues to get cheaper and more accessible, it will always be how it is used that dictates the impact of the content.”
Van Belkom helped usher in a new chapter of simulcast availability for live harness racing at Mohawk.
“YouTube streaming [that launched on Nov. 3, 2023], a long-awaited feature, was a huge game changer in making the signal more accessible on multiple devices and demographics,” he said.
Although his role was technically-oriented, the departing producer said that the human side of the job was what he would miss the most.
“Where do I start? You’re nothing without your team having your back,” he said. “There are far too many people that have made my time at Woodbine very special and if I were to start listing, I would surely forget someone, and I couldn’t forgive myself for that.”
Even so, van Belkom wanted to express his appreciation for his closest associates.
“Thank you to Rob and Kris Platts for entrusting me in my role for seven years and [for] mentorship,” he said. “Thank you to Curtis MacDonald for always thinking of me on his biggest projects and allowing me creative freedom along the way. Thank you to the drivers for the help in the success of [features] Mic’d Up and Livewire.”
He thanked his simulcast production team: John Hirst, Jeremy Grabatin, Ryan Corner, Lisa Germaney, Clarees Paul, Brian Costie, Thomas Scott, Chris Abel, Dan Stillo, Paul Viher, Cassie Hartsink, Dani Jackson, and Cody Bowron, as well as the Woodbine Entertainment “commentary team”: Chad Rozema, Randy Waples, John Rallis, Elissa Blowe, Jeff Bratt, Ken Middleton (“Hope to hear you back in the booth!”), and Mark McKelvie.
“On my last day, I was caught off guard by just how emotional it was to say goodbye to so many people I have worked so closely with for almost 15 years,” van Belkom said. “Your team can become like a family; you sometimes spend more time with them than your real one. As an editor, you take the final elements and assemble them for the best viewing experience. This is how I approach being a producer — you lead a team of talented people of different skills and abilities, and try to execute the vision to become reality.”
Although unable to publicly share his future plans at the moment, van Belkom said he was looking forward to the near future.
“An opportunity came my way that was very hard to overlook,” he said. “If I didn’t take the plunge on this now, I would always be looking back on it, questioning ‘What if?’”
The now-former Woodbine Mohawk Park simulcast producer said there is still room for improvement in the video presentation of live harness racing.
“I hope that simulcasting in the future can continue to pivot away from the standard of simply presenting the race coverage with minimal creative input or execution,” he said.
“I vividly remember when I started at Woodbine, asking why we don’t cut more during the racing coverage. I don’t remember the exact response, but it was something to the tune of, the viewer needs to know where each horse was in space and time. This can be still possible while making changes, [with the] perfect example being the way the Little Brown Jug used to be covered under the direction of Sam McKee. To my knowledge, there were no upset bettors ready to change the channel or having lost their place in the race.”
He noted that improving simulcast quality should never be treated as a luxury or an afterthought.
“The challenge remains the same as it always has, whether or not a track operator has the resources [funds] or the drive to elevate the simulcast signal beyond its requirements. I was very fortunate with Woodbine to have the resources and creative freedom to have done what I did, and I would love to see more tracks go in that direction.”
At Woodbine Mohawk Park, van Belkom explored the possibilities of showcasing standardbred racing amid a cluttered sports media landscape.
“As for clips that have gained traction online from the broadcast, I look at all of them with a sense of pride that with everything going on each night, we continued to find ways to have fun and keep it fresh,” he said. “It is a delight to see the responses that they get and the continued engagement from the fan base, especially making light of our mistakes.”
