The voice of lo­cal horse rac­ing and vet­er­an sports jour­nal­ist Dave Lamy passed away on Fri­day at the age of 80.

Guardian Me­dia Sports un­der­stands Lamy col­lapsed while at a su­per­mar­ket be­fore be­ing tak­en to the St James Med­ical fa­cil­i­ty where he was pro­nounced dead.

Lamy en­joyed a flour­ish­ing ca­reer as a sports broad­cast­er.

In an im­me­di­ate re­ac­tion to his death, for­mer FI­FA vice-pres­i­dent Jack Warn­er, whose friend­ship with Lamy dates back five decades, said, “He was one of the last re­main­ing true jour­nal­ists par­tic­u­lar­ly in the field of sport. His re­port­ing has al­ways been par ex­cel­lence and there­fore his pass­ing will leave a void in this coun­try that can­not be eas­i­ly filled. What I can say at this point, may his soul rest in peace.”

In re­fer­ring to Lamy as one of a kind, Warn­er went fur­ther to say, “I must con­fess that the lega­cy that he has left is on the wane and one hopes that some­how, some­where, some­one can open ei­ther a Dave Lamy jour­nal­ists' school or some kind of area where his knowl­edge can im­part though he would have left and gone to oth­er up and com­ing young sports jour­nal­ists.”

While his voice be­came syn­ony­mous with lo­cal horse rac­ing, Lamy was al­so pas­sion­ate about foot­ball. How­ev­er, horse rac­ing is where he start­ed his com­men­tary ca­reer. He was the un­der­study to the leg­endary broad­cast­er Raf­fie Knowles, who was the main sports an­chor for TTT and Ra­dio 610 in the 1960s and 1970s. He was award­ed the Alexan­der B. Chap­man award last year by Pres­i­dent Paula Mae Weekes for his life­long ser­vice to sport.

An­oth­er long-time friend and vet­er­an horse rac­ing cham­pi­on train­er Joe Hadeed al­so paid a glow­ing trib­ute to Lamy’s con­tri­bu­tion both as a rac­ing an­nounc­er and a sports jour­nal­ist.

“Sports has lost an icon. His lega­cy is fair­ness. He lis­tened to every­body. He lis­tened to every side of the prob­lem. He lis­tened to the as­so­ci­a­tions and the ath­letes. He tried his best to un­der­stand what every side was go­ing through and he nev­er took aside. He was al­ways fair and bal­anced,” Hadeed told Guardian Me­dia Sports on Fri­day.