‘Consummate’ broadcasting journalist Garry Ahern dies aged 75

Garry Ahern finishes his last sports bulletin on Morning Report in 2015. Photo / Stephen Hewson, RNZ

Veteran sports broadcaster Garry Ahern has died aged 75.

Ahern joined Radio New Zealand in 1969, retiring in 2015, and specialised in golf reporting while presenting sports bulletins on Morning Report for two decades.

He first joined the New Zealand Broadcasting Corporation in 1969 (later RNZ) as an accounts clerk in Whanganui.

Speaking on Morning Report, he explained how his mother was responsible for getting him into broadcasting after he had spent a couple of years at Victoria University in Wellington.

“I came home from golf one day and my mother said she’d heard an advertisement on the local radio station for an accountants clerk and that certainly wasn’t me, but I thought broadcasting could be quite interesting and that’s how it all started.”

A few years later he landed a sports journalist role in Wellington and covered 14 Commonwealth and Olympic Games since.

But his undoubted highlight was covering the New Zealand golf team’s win at the Eisenhower Trophy in 1992.

The team included Michael Campbell, who went on to win the US Open in 2005.

In 2013, Ahern’s contribution to sports journalism was recognised when he was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award by the National Sports Journalists Association.

The award citation described him “as the consummate broadcasting journalist who asks the right questions, gets the information and presents it knowledgeably and in an entertaining fashion”.

Ahern died on Tuesday surrounded by his family.

- RNZ