Behind every thrilling rowing finish at Lake Karapiro, every nail-biting sprint down the home straight, sits someone at the microphone painting the picture for thousands of spectators. The voices calling New Zealand’s regattas are as much part of race day as the shells hitting the water, yet their stories rarely get told.
Kirsty Dunhill stumbled into commentary almost by accident. A former coxswain with nearly four decades in rowing, she was chatting with experienced commentator John Howard after the 2009 National Championships in Twizel when she casually mentioned that commentary looked “fun and easy” and, frankly, came with a free lunch. The following season at Lake Karapiro, John called her bluff. By Christmas that year, Dunhill was in the control tower at her first regatta, discovering that being visible to hundreds of spectators was considerably more daunting than she’d bargained for.
What began as a lark became a passion. “I enjoyed the thrill of seeing races come to their conclusion and it was a nice distraction from focusing on my own squad,” says Dunhill, now Head of Rowing at St Cuthbert’s College in Auckland. “I found it all very natural, just like chatting to the bank.” She’s been doing exactly that for over 15 years, building a reputation for meticulous preparation, especially as major regattas approach and storylines emerge. She deliberately avoids calling St Cuthbert’s races and takes particular pleasure in novice eight finals, where engaging first-time rowers and their supporters feels essential.
Ian Cartwright brought a different energy to the microphone. A Cantabrian whose son rowed at Shirley Boys’ High School, Cartwright’s rapid-fire delivery and horse-racing-announcer style transformed how spectators experience racing. He’d never commentated before his wife, spotting his communication skills, encouraged him to try. That led to a conversation with Peter Midgley and his debut at the 2019 Canterbury Championships. “I found it quite exhilarating and quickly got over the fear of saying something wrong,” Cartwright recalls. He later trained with Britain’s Dr Treharne-Jones to sharpen his craft.
Cartwright approaches commentary with a clear mandate: inform, engage, entertain. He makes a point of acknowledging every crew in a race, not just the leaders. “If a parent has a child sitting seventh, they still deserve to know where their son or daughter is in the race,” he explains. The 2023 Maadi Cup showdown between St Bede’s and Hamilton Boys’, separated by just 0.06 seconds, remains his standout call. Yet Cartwright keeps perspective. “The commentary is just a very small cog in a big engine that helps deliver a regatta,” he says. “My hope is that I can play some small part in enhancing their enjoyment of the occasion.”
Both commentators offer the same advice to newcomers: don’t get fixated on leading boats, prepare names properly, and build confidence gradually. Accept feedback. Find your own voice. After all, spectators don’t want monotony or the same five phrases recycled endlessly. They want someone genuine, someone present, someone who makes their day at the regatta feel alive.
