Leigh Diffey has a need, for speed.
"If there's a race on NBC, Diffey's gonna call it," NBC Olympics Track and field announcer Leigh Diffey said. "So, it's not quite, it's not quite to that extreme. But it's pretty close, and that's fun, right? Racing is fun."
Diffey is the voice you hear each and every night, on NBC Sports track and field coverage.
"I'm lucky that NBC Sports has a lot of it," Diffey said.
Track and field, plus the Indy Car series? There's no doubt, that Diffey loves racing.
But he also knows Noah Lyles, an athlete he's calling something special.
"There's only one Usain Bolt. There's only one Noah Lyles," Diffey said. "But Noah has a little bit of that. The two of them met last year, last summer when Noah raced in Jamaica. And they had an embrace, after Noah's race, and the TV cameras and the microphones picked up a little bit. Usain Bolt said to him, don't change."
While Lyles brings the hype, Rice Lake, Wisconsin native Kenny Bednarek, brings the calm.
"The thing I love about Kenny Bednarek, Kung Fu Kenny, as we like to call him, is that he's kind of under the radar," Diffey said. "You know, he's the antithesis of Noah, in a way because he's not out there. He's not projecting. He's not telling people what he's going to do or forecasting. He just goes and does his work, which you gotta like that."
Adding to Leigh Diffey's Olympic and racing workload? He will replace NASCAR Cup Series announcer Rick Allen after NBC returns with racing coverage following its Olympic break. Diffey expects to take over in August.
