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."
Four years later he joined the sports department in Wellington and since then has reported on 14 Commonwealth and Olympic Games. He counts a career highlight as watching New Zealand lift golf's Eisenhower Trophy in 1992.
He joined Morning Report in 1997. On his retirement, Gary said: "[I'm] relieved that I don't have to set a 3.30am alarm clock anymore.
"It's been a wonderful, wonderful career that I really just fell into as a university dropout all those years ago."
