Travis Stone has been the voice of the Kentucky Derby since 2015. On March 15, he’ll add another Derby to his resume.

Stone, the track announcer at Churchill Downs, will call the first-ever Kentucky Derby points race at Virginia’s Colonial Downs, the March 15 Virginia Derby. The Virginia Derby – traditionally a summer grass race but now shifted onto the dirt at the tail end of winter – offers 50 Derby points to the winner, an amount that should be sufficient to guarantee a spot in the starting gate on the first Saturday in May.

The Virginia Derby, joined by the Virginia Oaks, caps off a three-day mini-meet in New Kent. The main race meet there takes place starting in early July, with regular Colonial announcer Jason Beem slated to return to action then.

It won’t be Stone’s first time announcing at Colonial Downs. But it will take some adjustment, he told host Nick Hahn on Off to the Races Radio March 1.

“I’ll just go back and watch a few races at that distance, at the track, just to kind of get a sense of how jockeys tend to ride that one-turn nine furlongs,” Stone said. “Do they move early? Do they wait to move? What does the far turn look like? You know, just try and get familiar with it.”

Stone said the biggest challenge to calling races at Colonial is that the windows for the cameras are directly to the left of the announcer’s booth.

“Those windows effectively block some of the view of the home stretch, particularly on dirt,” he explained. “When you’re used to looking at a race at Churchill, for example, I’m unobstructed from the top of the stretch all the way to the wire, and you just get into a rhythm. You’re looking at them through the binoculars, and you’re rolling. But when something disrupts your view, even if subtle, it can throw you off kilter. And it did throw me off kilter when I called there.”

With a decade’s worth of Derbies in his rearview mirror, Stone has seen plenty: an 80-1 upset, a Derby winner DQed by a medication positive, and of course, Triple Crown champions.

“One of my favorite sayings is, there’s no such thing as a bad Derby, but some are better than others,” Stone said. “Every Derby has compelling storylines and interesting threads.”

Last year, that included the race itself, when a wall of horses turned for home together. Mystik Dan ultimately prevailed by a nose over Sierra Leone, with Forever Young a nose behind that runner.

“You could see it developing. You could feel it,” Stone recalled. “You could see all these moves happening… But here’s where I got lucky: The binoculars race callers use are very high magnification… and I just happened to move inside when Mystik Dan came through.”

Will this year’s Kentucky Derby measure up to that one? And more to the point, will the winner have made a stop in New Kent?

Those questions are still to be answered, which for horse racing fans, is the best news of all.

The Virginia Derby has drawn 90 nominations. It is limited to 14 starters with two also-eligibles. Entries will be drawn Saturday, March 8.

Excitement has been building towards the weekend, as the race figures to have a significant impact on the Derby picture. It is the only Derby prep on that weekend, and it’s the final 50-point prep on the calendar.

“Every Saturday in the spring, they just keep accumulating,” Stone said of the Derby preps. “It’s like a snowball, and obviously it all builds up to that first Saturday in May. Obviously, what’s happening [in Virginia] in two weeks, it all keeps piling up. And for racing fans, it’s the best time of the year, no two ways about it.”