Whanganui-raised sports broadcaster Gary Ahern has called fulltime on his distinguished career after 40 years of covering everything from golf to the Olympics. He joined the old New Zealand Broadcasting Corporation, now Radio New Zealand, in 1969 as an accountants clerk in Whanganui after dropping out of university.
In 2013,
Ahern received the Lifetime Contribution to Sport award at the Sir Terry McLean national sports journalism awards.
During his final broadcast for Morning Report on Thursday, he said he had his mum to thank for getting him into it. "I didn't do any studying when I was at university, so I went back home to Whanganui not knowing what in the world I was going to do.
"I'd played golf since I was about 10 and was really enjoying some more free time after two great years at university, fruitless years though.
"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."
