Gerard Whateley

Gerard Whateley (born 28 October 1974) is a Melbourne-based sports broadcaster and writer. He is regarded by many as Australia’s pre-eminent sports broadcaster. Since January 2018 he has been chief sports caller and host of the award-winning Whateley program on the sports radio station SEN1116. He is also co-host of Fox Footy's AFL 360 and an occasional sports columnist for the Herald Sun newspaper. Whateley’s sport broadcasting career has been expansive calling major Australian and international events, including the AFL Grand Final, International Cricket both in Australia and abroad, the Melbourne Cup and both swimming (London and Rio) and athletics (Paris) at the Summer Olympics. Whateley travelled to Royal Ascot in 2012 to call Australia’s legendary racehorse Black Caviar win the Diamond Jubilee Stakes and authored the best-selling book on the horse’s career. He is the first and only Australian to call the Super Bowl play-by-play, a broadcast he has delivered since Super Bowl LII in Minnesota.

Career

Early career

Whateley started his media career at the Herald Sun newspaper in 1993. His early experiences as a journalist were broad incorporating police rounds, courts and state politics before he became the paper's movie writer and editor of HIT magazine (the Herald Sun's movie and music lift out). He was later appointed senior writer for the newly released Sunday Magazine in 1998. During this period Whateley travelled extensively to interview the likes of Steven Spielberg, Jack Nicholson and Leonardo DiCaprio among many other stars of the time. During that time, Whateley pursued his passion for sport writing in-depth feature articles on Greg Norman, Damien Oliver and Jacques Villeneuve and Australia's champion jockey of the era Damien Oliver.

Television career

The next phase of Whateley’s career saw him move into television accepting the role of Senior Sports Reporter for the Ten Network in 1999. Among his chief responsibilities at Ten, he covered the nation’s major sporting code, the Australian Football League (AFL) and horse racing. It didn’t take long for the industry to acknowledge his talent and he was named Young Journalist of the Year at the Melbourne Press Club’s prestigious Quill Awards in 1999. Whateley’s emerging reputation as a journalist of authority and accuracy was further enhanced at the 2000 Sydney Olympics, breaking a series of stories surrounding drug use in the weightlifting.

Whateley was a foundation member of the Network 10 AFL commentary team when the broadcast rights were secured in 2001. Whateley was a panellist on the acclaimed ABC Sunday morning sports show Offsiders from its inception in 2005, and was elevated to host in 2014.

In the middle of the 2010 season, Fox Footy premiered AFL 360 which featured Whateley as co-host alongside Herald Sun Chief Football Writer Mark Robinson. The show examined footy “from all angles” and after a season and a half on a Wednesdays became the nightly program on the reopened Fox Footy channel. AFL 360 was repeatedly awarded the Most Outstanding Program at the Australian Football Media Association Awards most recently for the 2024 season.

In 2024, SEN and Fox Footy released Whateley on load to Channel 9 to call the Athletics at the Paris Olympic Games. He called the Men’s 100 metre final - “heartstopper in Paris” – and the “rare treasure” of Jess Hull’s silver medal in the Women’s 1500 metres. Whateley’s calling was hailed by The Australian newspaper as “cementing his status as Australia’s best sports broadcaster.” (August 12, 2024).

Radio career

Whateley began calling AFL games on ABC Radio in 2002 and moved full time to the National Broadcaster in September 2004. Over the next 14 years he would call every major sport in Australia from Australian Open tennis, to President’s Cup golf to A-League Grand Finals alongside Ange Postecogloue. Principally Whateley led the Grandstand AFL coverage, called the Melbourne Cup from 2008, took on the ABC’s remodelled Test Cricket coverage from 2015, and covered three Olympic Games in Beijing, London and Rio where Whateley called Kyle Chalmers thrilling gold medal victory in the 100 metres freestyle in the pool.

In January 2018, he joined Melbourne sports radio station 1116 SEN as Chief Sports Caller and host of the morning program. Whateley debuted on 29 January 2018 with Roger Federer as his headline guest. Whateley leads the station’s AFL Nation coverage and has on numerous occasions been named the industry’s Most Outstanding Caller on Radio. Whateley heads the cricket commentary team from the Ashes to tours of India and numerous World Cups. His call of Virat Kohli’s match-winning innings in a T20 World Cup match against Pakistan at the MCG is hugely popular with Indian cricket fans. Whateley’s coverage the morning after the ball tampering scandal in 2018 shaped the national debate of events that forever changed the Australian cricket landscape.

Super Bowl

Whateley is the first and only Australian to call America’s showpiece sporting event the Super Bowl. He has provided the play-by-play call of NFL’s biggest game annually since 2018 in Minnesota for Super Bowl LII. That inaugural call was given a place of honour in Deadspin’s Super Bowl reel and Whateley’s call of Tom Brady “bereft on the turf” was printed on t-shirts by Philadelphia Eagles fans. Brian Curtis for The Ringer wrote: “The best call of last year’s Super Bowl didn’t come from Al Michaels. It was delivered by an excited Australian.” Super Bowl LVIII in Las Vegas was Whateley’s seventh at the microphone.

Publications

In 2012, Whateley wrote a book about Australian thoroughbred racehorse Black Caviar, Black Caviar: The Horse of a Lifetime. Later that year, Whateley rejoined the Herald Sun as a columnist.

Awards

• Four-time winner of the Australian Football Media Association's "Alf Brown Trophy", awarded to the most outstanding media performer.
• Inaugural winner of the Harry Gordon Australian Sports Journalist of the Year
• Australian Commercial Radio Awards Best Sports Presenter
• Ten times acknowledged for the Best Sport Coverage by a broadcaster at the Australian Sports Commission Awards

Personal life

Whateley first met his wife, Claire, when they were teenagers at their local church in the south-eastern Melbourne suburb of Mulgrave. They have three children. Whateley supports the Geelong Football Club. He is managed by Jason Baker, Signature Sport.

External links

• Setting the sport agenda
• ‘It comes at you so ferociously’: Calling from the Olympics hot seat
• Gerard Whateley commits to SEN long term
• Whateley's profile on the ABC website